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THE HOMELANDS OF JEWRY 

PERCENTAGES OF TOTAL POPULATION ARE INDICATED BY SHADINGS 



Courtny »f American-Jeudsh Committee 



THE JEW PAYS 

A NARRATIVE OF THE CONSEQUENCES OF 
THE WAR TO THE JEWS OF EASTERN 
EUROPE, AND OF THE MANNER IN 
WHICH AMERICANS HAVE AT- 
TEMPTED TO MEET THEM 



By M. E. RAVAGE 




New York ALFRED • A • KNOPF Mcmxix 



COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY 
ALFRED A. KNOPF, Inc. 






0CT24"r9[9 



IN THE tTNTTES STATES Or AMERICA 



5)CU5J35455 



THIS BOOK IS OFFERED 
as a tribute to the millions of 
Americans — Jews and non- 
Jews — who have cheerfully 
given of their plenty and of- 
ten submitted to sacrifices in 
order that the unfortunates 
of distant lands might live. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 

I The Homelands of the Jew 3 

IT Jews and War in Eastern Europe 14 

III The Reliance of the Jew in the New World 29 

IV The Earliest Response 35 
V America to the Rescue 45 

VI Slow Progress 56 

VII The Philanthropy of the Masses 65 

VIII The Dramatic Beginning 75 

IX The Conquest of the Country 86 

X The Conduct of a Campaign from Without 94 

XI The Conduct of a Campaign from Within 103 

XII The Psychology of Giving 115 

XIII The Share of the Others 122 

XIV Problems of Distribution 134 

XV Problems for To-day and To-morrow 145 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



1. 


The Homelands of Jewry (Map) 


Frontispiece 


2. 


In the Wake of the Armies 


Facing page 11 


3. 


Dangerous Enemies 


26 


4. 


Campaign Posters 


" " 98 


5. 


In the Whirl of a Campaign 


" 110 


6. 


A Bit of Applied Christianity 


" 131 



THE JEW PAYS 



CHAPTER I 

THE HOMELANDS OF THE JEW 

THE outbreak of war in August, 1914, fell 
upon the ears of America as a tragic surprise. 
To the nations of Europe it came as an almost wel- 
come relief from a nightmare of suspense. To 
one people alone the call to arms was an unmiti- 
gated catastrophe. The Jews of Eastern Europe, 
in common with the other peoples of the continent, 
had seen war lurking on the European horizon for 
a generation past; but, unlike their neighbors, they 
had beheld the thing in its naked barbarity, stripped 
of its traditional trappings. To the great nations 
of the West — or at least to their governments — a 
European war promised doubtless to be a day of 
reckoning with a menacing rival; to the small sub- 
jugated or half -free countries lying east of Ger- 
many, between the Baltic and the Mediterranean, 
such a war might well hold out the hope of ma- 
terializing long-cherished national aspirations. To 
both alike a struggle in the open was in any event 

to be preferred to the threat and the tension of half 

3 



4 THE JEW PAYS 

a century of more or less secret whettings of the 
sword. 

Not that the common man and woman in every 
country of Europe was unmoved by the prospect 
of the blood and terror made familiar to them by 
the experiences of past struggles; nevertheless for 
the strong as well as for the weak, there was a com- 
plement and at least a partial reward in the high 
enthusiasm of belligerency and the high hopes for 
a brighter and a more stable future. The Pole, for 
instance, while thoroughly aware of his share of 
the pathetic cost of a great war, might yet be glad- 
dened by the prospect of his country's unity and 
independent statehood resulting from the general 
ruin. The Vlach, projecting his vision beyond the 
gloom around him, might not unreasonably be 
stirred by the hope of reunion with independent 
Rumania. And each of Austria's subject peoples 
could welcome the bitter necessity of shedding its 
blood for the immediate benefit of its ancient en- 
emy and oppressor, by reflecting on the inevitable 
collapse of the polyglot empire in a world war. 
France, in the face of possible annihilation, might 
take comfort in the gratification of her sentiment of 
revenge and find relief in at last coming to grips 
with a brutal and intolerable foe. While England, 
not reckoning the price and not heeding it, might 
well hold any cost trifling in exchange for the 



HOMELANDS 5 

freedom of the seas. Only the Jew of East-Europe, 
unblinded by any possible advantage to himself in 
the outcome, must view the lowering calamity with 
impartial judgment and set it down, both for him- 
self and for the world, as all but a total loss. 

There is not in all this the slightest implication 
of superior insight on the part of the Jew, nor of 
inferior patriotism. The Jew of Russia and Aus- 
tria and the Balkans is, of course, gifted with 
no more statesmanlike vision than his fellows. 
Neither does he lack, by comparison with them, in 
devotion to his hearth and to the gods of his house- 
hold. Even in lands where the Jew is deprived of 
the rights accorded to other portions of the popula- 
tion, there is no human creature more devotedly at- 
tached to home and family than he. And it is this 
affectionate attachment which is, after all, the very 
heart and meaning of patriotism. The European 
Jew's sober valuation of international warfare is 
only a logical outgrowth of his place in history. It 
inevitably proceeds from his unique position in 
the European polity. Whatever good or ill war 
may bring to others, to him every war is a chapter 
in extermination. Bound by ties which transcend 
national frontiers, all battle is, as far as the Jew 
goes, a fratricidal irrelevance. Whether or not 
there is in practice Christian brotherhood on this 
earth, there can be no doubt of the very real and, 



6 THE JEW PAYS 

to the war-makers, the very annoying existence of 
Jewish brotherhood. The status of Jewry in the 
world is, in this respect, exactly opposite the status 
of America. Both are international peoples. But 
while the American commonwealth partakes of the 
blood and bone of all peoples, the remnant of Israel 
is scattered among all the nations of the earth and 
its blood and bone is part and parcel of them all. 
It matters not what nation may battle against what 
other, every struggle in the Western world is a 
battle between Jew and Jew. Such is the penalty 
that Jewry pays for being the one dispersed people 
among the nations and for persistently carrying on 
its mission through the flux and instability of his- 
tory. It is owing to the fact that the Jew retains 
his name, but not his local habitation, that he is, 
or should be, the single missionary of peace in a 
world that clings, despite its infamy and absurdity, 
to the military tradition of a past and utterly 
shelved age. 

How quickly this Jewish premonition was more 
than vindicated is well known to all those who are 
in the slightest degree familiar with the records 
of the Eastern war zone. For it is to be under- 
stood that when I speak of the Jews in the world 
I am thinking principally of the unemancipated 
millions who inhabit that strip of territory which 
is the border-line between Western and Eastern 



HOMELANDS 7 

Europe, and, indeed, between the Occident and 
the Orient. Here, on a narrow band of the earth's 
surface, comprising a fraction of the fallen Aus- 
trian and Russian empires, and including the ma- 
jor part of the Balkan Peninsula, are concentrated 
not only the largest number of Jewish folk, but 
also that distinctive tradition and point of view and 
manner of life which is the recognized hall-mark 
of Jewry. It is here preeminently that the Jew is 
a Jew by every test and definition. It is here that 
for a tJiousand years or more the major fraction of 
the Remnant has survived (in the body as well as 
in the spirit) and has evolved a culture and a civili- 
zation of its own. Jews in the Western World 
generally, and in the Western Hemisphere in par- 
ticular, have, to be sure, made precious and con- 
siderable contributions to the world's life and 
thought which not even their most inveterate en- 
emies can gainsay, but these contributions are gen- 
erally the gifts of individuals to the country and 
the polity of which they are, in a larger or lesser 
sense, a part. Heine was as much a German poet 
as Koerner or Goethe. Disraeli was an English 
peer and as much a British statesman as Gladstone 
or Palmerston. Spinoza was no more a tribal 
philosopher than was Spencer or Kant. That all 
these men happen to have been Jews is of no more 
significance than the fact that Mr. Gompers or Mr, 



8 THE JEW PAYS 

Adolph Ochs or Mr. Leon Trotzky are Jews — of no 
more significance than the fact that Mr. Frank P. 
Walsh is a Catholic or Mr. Bernard Shaw a 
Protestant. In the Western World a man may call 
himself a Jew for any one variety of reasons: it is 
only in Eastern Europe — in Poland, in Galicia, in 
Lithuania, and the rest — that a Jew is part of a 
people and a civilization. 

It is in Eastern Europe, as I say, that the Jew is 
really a Jew in the genuine sense of the word. 
Here, as much as in the Palestine of the prophets 
and the kings and the early Christians, contribu- 
tions to the common progress of mankind when 
made by Jews become first the inheritance of Jewry 
and are only indirectly, through the channel of the 
Jewish people, handed on to the rest of the world. 
Here a Jew, if he is a poet, will write in a tongue 
which Jews alone can understand, and draw his 
matter and his inspiration from sources distinctly 
Jewish. Here the thinker of Jewish parentage will 
be a Jewish thinker, and here statesmen like Ahad 
Ha'am and Mr. Sokolow, who are of Jewish stock, 
are Jewish statesmen. In the region stretching 
from Finland on the north to Jugo-Slavia on the 
south, the religion of the elder Jews is still quite 
recognizably the Jewish religion. On this strip 
of European territory the Jewish Exile, with all its 
distinctive character of discrimination tempered by 



HOMELANDS 9 

massacre, still follows the traditional models, so 
that no one can mistake it for something else. And 
here in this distant corridor, between East and 
West, the seemingly shattered Jewish spirit still 
knows at times how to flame into revolt after the 
fashion of the prophets and the founder of Chris- 
tianity. 

It was this distinctive civilization, this Jewish 
common life, primarily, that Jews with vision the 
world over, saw threatened with destruction in the 
last days of July, 1914. And the threat lay in the 
geographic and social and historical position of 
Jewry in the Christian system. Jewry was, to be- 
gin with, a buffer between the nations of Central 
Europe and the Russian Empire. It was lying om- 
inously and helplessly in the path of huge armies 
rushing for each other's throat; which in itself 
was a sufficient promise of extinction. But there 
were elements in its position, besides, which ex- 
posed it to destruction vastly surer and more effec- 
tive than that which threatened to overcome any 
other buffer people in Europe or Asia. For Jewry 
in Poland and in Rumania rested not only like a 
grain between the millstones of neighboring and 
quarreling states; it was a buffer between its indi- 
vidual next door neighbors as well. Jewry was 
threatened with sudden death not merely from with- 
out, but with particular suddenness and complete- 



10 THE JEW PAYS 

ness from within. The Jewish community in East- 
ern Europe was a tenant community. It had never 
owned its home. It was, in the best and quietest 
times even, a stranger in its own back yard; and 
its bitterest and most terrifying danger lay in the 
direction, not so much of the invading enemy, as 
of the foe at home. The Prussian, to be sure, 
might well be relied on to work havoc in his prog- 
ress, but as an invader he might at least be expected 
to make it general and to play no favorites. His 
vengeance could with some degree of certainty be 
trusted to fall alike upon alien Jew and loyal Mus- 
covite or Pole. What the loyal Muscovite and 
Pole, on the other hand, might take a fancy to do 
while his armed brethren were busy repelling the 
invader, was at once more mysterious and more 
certain. It was the more certain because these 
gentry had been gracious enough to exhibit fair 
samples of what they were capable of in peace 
times. And the mystery lay in just how far they 
could improve upon previous effort at a time when 
civilized attention was centered upon other things. 
The suspense was mercifully not long drawn out. 
The moment that the great armies were let loose. 
East European Jewry was caught in the hurricane, 
and there began that grinding process which has 
persisted for five years and which will continue 
to the end unless the civilized conscience of man- 



HOMELANDS 11 

kind shall step in and bring that greater and more 
basic relief to supplement the heroic single-handed 
effort of the Jews of America at temporary salvage, 
which is the theme of this book. The pathetic tale 
of the woes of invaded Belgium becomes by com- 
parison almost cheerful reading. Indeed, no peo- 
ple in history was ever overwhelmed by a disaster 
that in any degree could measure up to this one. 
For Belgium was an organized State, and when it 
was forced into the war it instantly became the ally 
of great powers and enlisted the sympathy of the 
entire world. Belgium was a country with a gov- 
ernment of its own, it had a place in the political 
and economic scheme of the world, which insured 
it moral and material support from other nations. 
Its government could borrow, as it did, numberless 
millions to feed its people, against its own national 
resources and prospects. It could take the fortunes 
of war with some degree of calm and hope. Faced 
with a powerful enemy on the one side, it could 
at least rely on its powerful friends on the other. 
In time the tide might turn, the invader be thrust 
out, and the liberator be welcomed. Jewry could 
take no comfort in any such hopes in the hour of 
its trial. Enlisted though it was in the service of 
both belligerents, it could expect no protection 
from either. What it might await and what it ac- 
tually got was the charge of disloyalty to both. I, 



12 THEJEWPAYS 

for one, should esteem the Jewish spirit the less 
if the charge should prove to be untrue ; but whether 
the Jews of Poland and Russia and Rumania were 
pro-German or pro-Russian during the war does 
not in the slightest alter their case. German and 
Russian treated them with equal impartiality as 
their immediate and principal victims. It seems 
as if the governments and the general staffs of both 
countries had tacitly agreed that whatever might 
be the outcome of the major objects of the war, it 
should at least be made certain that one aim shall 
not remain unachieved, namely: the extermination 
of the Jews of Eastern Europe. 

For it was not the mere routine terrors, which 
the civil population of a border country ought to 
expect, that these people were subjected to. From 
all accounts and all witnesses the conviction grows 
irresistibly that their fate was a matter of deliber- 
ate and diabolical conspiracy. As the armies at- 
tacked and counter-attacked and rolled each other 
backward and forward, the non-combatant popu- 
lation endured all the usual misery that belongs to 
warfare, and the Jew got of this no more than his 
share. What fell to his lot behind the lines is 
another story. And it is by the side of this story 
that the case of Belgium fades into insignificance. 
Wholesale deportations of women and old men and 
children — people of no earthly industrial value; 



HOMELANDS 13 

the looting of homes and shops without even the 
apology of calling it punitive indemnity; forced 
evacuations of whole towns without notice and in 
the middle of the night; freight cars filled with the 
sick and helpless, left on the railway tracks in the 
wilderness until their occupants succumbed from 
hunger or suffocation — such was the order of the 
day for the Jews of the Russian Empire regardless 
of which side was in control ; while the vast masses 
who could not be either massacred or exiled re- 
mained in their places to survive or perish, as their 
stars might decree. 

This was the state of things in the homelands of 
the world's Jewry in 1914, when the appeal and the 
cry went forth to America for help. 

It was a cry and an appeal that was to be heeded 
before it was issued. 



CHAPTER II 

JEWS AND WAR IN EASTERN EUROPE 

THE terrible catastrophe which overwhelmed 
the great Jewish community in Eastern 
Europe had its roots in something much deeper and 
more lasting than the great war. The war merely 
served to increase the tragic burden. For one 
thing, it completed the isolation of the Jewish peo- 
ple by destroying communication with its sister 
communities in Western Europe and America. It 
diverted the attention of the world to more pressing 
problems and thus left Jewry to the mercies of its 
ancient enemies. The world war was in effect no 
more than the signal for bringing the age-long 
guerrilla between Jew and non-Jew in that quarter 
of the world into the open. The tinder had been 
there for centuries, everlastingly smoking, upon 
occasion emitting tongues of flame, but for the 
most part, smoldering covertly. It needed but a 
general conflagration in neighboring and distant 
parts to set off this highly inflammable magazine. 
In brief, the frightful and consuming misery of the 

14 



JEWSANDWAR 15 

Jews in Russia and Poland was a product directly 
of anti-Semitism and only incidentally of war. 
The war was not its cause; it was only its occasion 
and excuse. 

For a moment it looked indeed as if the Jews of 
Russia at least were going to bear no more of the 
burden than the other groups of the population. 
The Czar's proclamation, issued shortly after the 
declaration of hostilities, promised to wipe out the 
old discriminations. It really looked as if, in the 
midst of a great national struggle, even the infa- 
mous despotism of the Romanoffs would become 
sufficiently enlightened to see the wisdom of uniting 
the multitude of races and peoples, whom it had 
divided in order to dominate, purely as a measure 
of attaining their support. The promise, to be 
sure, was of no great merit coming from such a 
source. The word of the autocracy had too often 
in the past been plighted only to be broken. 
Nevertheless, Jewry heeded it hopefully, thinking 
that perhaps for once the leopard might really 
change his spots. The Jews were to be swiftly dis- 
illusioned. 

The ground began to be prepared in the very first 
days of the war by methodically discrediting the 
Jewish population in the eyes of its neighbors. It 
was a process that proved all too easy. The Jews 
spoke a language closely akin to German. There- 



16 THE JEW PAYS 

fore it was logical that they should be sympathetic 
to Germany. Furthermore, the Jews were an 
"alien" people who had migrated centuries before 
into Poland and Lithuania from certain German 
provinces. Some of their fellows still remained 
in the German Empire and constituted a no insig- 
nificant part of the German armies. Therefore it 
was to be expected that Jewish soldiers of Russia 
would be in constant and fraternal communication 
with their kinsfolk among the enemy. The very 
infamy of the autocracy in its past dealings with 
the Jewish population was seized upon at once as 
evidence and as partial justification for the 
trumped-up charges. As a member of the Con- 
stitutional Democratic Party frankly confessed in 
the Duma in a different connection, "The Jews 
have suffered such cruel persecutions in Russia 
that they might well be excused even if the spy 
stories were found to be true." No resource was 
too base or too fantastic to be used against this 
helpless people. 

And so the ball was rapidly and systematically 
set rolling. First it was a series of spy stories de- 
signed to injure selected individuals and indirectly 
to cast reflection upon the loyalty of the mass. 
For the most part these inventions were concocted 
and circulated in Poland, as might naturally be 
expected, both in consequence of the greater in- 



JEWS AND WAR 17 

tensity of anti-Jewish feeling in Poland and because 
of the fact that the war in its earlier phases was 
fought in Polish territory/ 

The circulators of these damaging charges were 
not given to fastidious discriminations. The Jew 
was branded as disloyal now to the Austro-Ger- 
man, now to the Russian cause, depending only on 
which belligerent happened for the moment to be 
in power. It was of little consequence that the 
charges were invariably proven to be groundless. 
By the time investigation had been completed the 
effects of the indictment had traveled too far to be 
recaptured, and the intended injury was accom- 
plished beyond recall. How many deaths of in- 
nocent people resulted from these accusations one 
can only faintly imagine. In the town of Zamosti 
near the Hungarian frontier five Jewish men were 
hanged by the Russian authorities without trial, in 
September, 1914, although seven others who had 
been charged with the same offense of having given 
aid to the Austrian enemy during his temporary 
occupation of the town were subsequently acquit- 
ted. At Lemberg about the same time nearly 
seventy Jews were subjected to severe bodily in- 

1 For material in the remainder of this chapter I am deeply in- 
debted to the excellent material collected in a little volume en- 
titled "The Jews in the Eastern War Zone," published in 1916 
by the American Jewish Committee; to which I would refer the 
reader for further details. 



18 THE JEW PAYS 

jury in consequence of accusations made against 
them and a large number of their fellows of having 
fired upon Russian troops. They were in the long 
run, after due investigation, cleared of all guilt, but 
the frightful damage inflicted upon them had in 
the meantime been done and could not well be re- 
paired. The Jews of whole towns — Kieltse, Ra- 
dom, Mariampol, and many others — ^were sub- 
jected to endless indignities and downright physi- 
cal suffering only to be declared innocent in the 
sequel. Perhaps the fiercest instance of the rav- 
ages of this spy mania and insane hatred of a whole 
people is the case of the Jews of Jusefow, nearly all 
of whom were ruinously maltreated and at least 
fourscore of whom were actually murdered on the 
never proven charge that they had poisoned the 
wells of the district. Sometimes, though all too 
infrequently, the victims of this wholesale plotting 
were rescued at the last moment from the clutches 
of their slanderers. Once it was a Russian priest; 
another time it was a Polish officer; then again 
military tribunals became the instruments of merci- 
ful justice appearing in the nick of time to 
present the redeeming evidence. But in the ma- 
jority of cases no such fortunate accident inter- 
vened on behalf of the proscribed. 

Aflfairs came to such a pass that even the most 
reactionary elements in Russia awoke to the danger 



JEWS AND WAR 19 

of this unheard-of procedure. Inclined as the 
average member of the ruling class might be to 
curry favor with the Polish population during the 
war, it became evident even to them that this con- 
stant repetition of unfounded charges, with all their 
consequences of execution, plunder and deepening 
animosity, was threatening to disintegrate the 
morale of the civil population and to create a spirit 
behind the lines which would inevitably undermine 
the effectiveness of the armed forces of the coun- 
try. Wherefore it should not be surprising that in 
many a controversy between Jews and Poles, the 
Russians, many of them of long anti-Semitic pres- 
tige, were found taking sides with the Jews. The 
very leader of the anti-Semitic party of Russia, re- 
turning from Poland early in 1915, was constrained 
to admit that he had seen "nothing bad on the part 
of the Jews although the Poles made up all sorts 
of accusations against them." "In these Polish 
reports," according to an account of his remarks 
in the Russian newspaper Rasviet, of April 26th, 
1915, "you feel prejudice, vindictiveness, hatred, 
nothing else. The Jews are loyal and brave and 
it is most inadvisable to pursue a policy which 
might convert six million subjects into enemies." 

Unhappily this sanity came somewhat tardily to 
the traditional bureaucratic and military mental- 
ity of the old regime, and even then was somewhat 



20 THEJEWPAYS 

sporadic and capricious in its visitations. The 
lifelong custom and usage of an entire oligarchy 
swaddled and nursed in traditional practices can- 
not be changed by sudden conversion. The Jew 
had by long habit become entirely too convenient 
a scapegoat to be dispensed with in these strenuous 
times. For generations Russian officialdom, from 
the Czar down, had been trained to resort to race 
hatred as a way out of administrative difficulties 
consequent upon its own congenital imbecility. 
From time immemorial the Jew in Russia had been 
the safety valve of the inefficient despotism. 
Whenever the peasant or the town laborer showed 
symptoms of restlessness that threatened to become 
a danger to authority, officialdom had always 
known, as by a kind of instinct, how to deflect the 
popular sentiment in the direction of the Jew. 
Now the autocracy had once more boggled its job. 
The Russian armies were experiencing defeat after 
defeat in their combat with the vastly superior au- 
tocracies of Germany and Austria. It looked as 
if the whole immense military power of the empire 
would be crumpled up under the pressure of the 
intelligent enemy. Therefore the feeble-minded 
command, seeking an avenue of escape from the 
wrath of the people whom it had betrayed, fell 
back quite naturally on its ancient and well-tried 
instrument; and from this day on until its timely 



JEWS AND WAR 21 

end, at the hands of the revolution, one finds the 
constituted authority of the country itself engaged 
in spreading suspicion within the army and among 
the people. 

It may seem incredible, but the records leave no 
doubt of the actual issuance of military orders call- 
ing upon the army and the civil authorities to take 
drastic measures against alleged Jewish treachery. 
It became a common daily occurrence for the Rus- 
sian forces upon occupying a town to take hostages 
among the Jews and to threaten them with execu- 
tion "in case of necessity." Jewish homes and 
shops were regularly searched for arms and in- 
struments of communication. The use of the Yid- 
dish language was prohibited. People who had 
for centuries been accustomed to no other speech 
were suddenly forbidden to employ that medium 
either publicly or privately. Jewish theaters and 
the entire Yiddish press were, as a matter of course 
and routine, suppressed. A deputy in the Duma 
furnished to that body, without contradiction, the 
following long list of discriminations perpetrated 
by the ofl&cial censorship alone against the Jews. 

1. It systematically expunged or mutilated the 
names of Jews to whom the cross of St. George had 
been awarded. 

2. When the Mayor of Petrograd congratulated 
the Jewish community upon the heroic conduct of 



22 THEJEWPAYS 

a lad of 13, named Kaufman, the censor suppressed 
the fact that Kaufman was a Jew, and that the 
community referred to was the Jewish community. 

3. Stories in the Russian press of the valor of 
Jews in the French armies are either suppressed 
or the Jewish names cut out. 

4. A news item referring to the fact that Gen- 
eral Semenov, whom Jewish soldiers had saved 
from capture by the Germans, was treating Jews 
kindly, was suppressed by the censor. 

5. Letters of regimental commanders to the par- 
ents of Jewish hussars congratulating them on the 
valor of their sons, or notifying them of medals of 
honor bestowed upon them, were suppressed by 
the censor. 

6. The military censorship also suppressed news 
of an absolutely non-military nature, whenever it 
might in any manner have been construed as friendly 
to Jews. Thus, a news item referring to the non- 
sectarian activities of the National Relief Com- 
mittee, headed by the Princess Tatyana, daughter 
of the Czar, was suppressed. A news item regard- 
ing the disapproval of the Council of Ministers of 
the policy of expelling Jews en masse and of whole- 
sale charges of treachery was also suppressed. 

7. Even the official declaration of Count Bo- 
brinski, Military Governor of Galicia, referring to 



JEWS AND WAR 23 

the correctness of the conduct of the Jews of Gali- 
cia, was suppressed. 

8. But — outrageously false items published in 
the notoriously anti-Semitic papers were generally 
passed by the censor without hesitation. The No- 
vae Vremya, the Russkoe Znamya, and other anti- 
Semitic organs, systematically published reports 
of wholesale Jewish desertions, treachery, spying, 
etc., without at any time producing an iota of evi- 
dence. Thus, Russkoe Znamya declared that the 
loyalty of not a single Jewish soldier could be de- 
pended upon. The Novoe Vremya declared that 
the Jews were without exception embittered enemies 
of the Russian army, and that during the Japanese 
war 18,000 out of 27,000 soldiers voluntarily sur- 
rendered as prisoners to the Japanese. Stories 
without name, date or place to the effect that small 
Polish boys warned the Russian soldiers to take 
nothing from Jews because everything they would 
furnish was poisoned were passed by the censor, 
and made much of by the press. The notorious 
Kuzhi canard was not only passed by the censor 
and printed in the official and semi-official press of 
Russia, but the censors even hinted, to that section 
of the press which hesitated to publish a tale so 
manifestly absurd, that future relations with the 
censorship might be imperiled if the story were 



24 THE JEW PAYS 

not given proper publicity. Editors received a 
continuous stream of circulars forbidding them to 
touch upon questions which had absolutely no re- 
lation to the war. 

9. When the great writers and publicists of 
Russia decided that it would be desirable, for the 
honor of Russia, to speak a good word for the 
Jews and thereby indirectly deprecate before the 
world the merciless governmental policy, the 
pamphlet containing their symposium was sup- 
pressed by the military censor. Even the prelim- 
inary letter of inquiry sent out by these eminent 
Russians, soliciting information as to the partici- 
pation of Jews in the war, was suppressed. The 
Jewish weekly, the Novy Voskhod, was fined 2,000 
roubles and ultimately suppressed because of the 
publication of this letter.^ 

The results of this policy of suspicion and sup- 
pression might readily have been foreseen. The 
dark forces of race animosity thus supported by 
official encouragement and cooperation grew bolder 
from day to day and continually multiplied their 
activities. Thy spy mania, never quite extin- 
guished, broke forth with greater venom and in- 
tensity than ever. Atrocities upon the Jewish in- 
habitants, hitherto of a sporadic and local char- 
acter, assumed the shape of an organized nation- 
lOp. cit., pp. 57-60. 



, JEWS AND WAR 25 

wide policy. Where there had formerly been cas- 
ual expulsions of suspected individuals there was 
now a wholesale and standing order for the re- 
moval of the entire Jewish masses from the regions 
affected by the fighting, which might at any moment 
be executed without notice. The sudden enforced 
migrations to which reference was made in the last 
chapter were among the first fruits of this enlight- 
ened governmental attitude toward a portion of its 
constituency. Whole towns, particularly of the 
smaller kind, were cleared over night of their Jew- 
ish inhabitants under the now familiar pretext of 
military necessity. For a time it looked as if the 
long-desired expatriation of Polish and Lithuanian 
Jewry would be accomplished as one of the perma- 
nent achievements of a glorious world war. But 
at this moment the threatened disaster to the Rus- 
sian armies occurred and Poland and Lithuania 
were overrun by the German invader. 

Imagination can well portray the scenes incident 
upon these evacuations. But there happens to ex- 
ist the most unquestionable sort of evidence which 
may at once assist as well as check the vagaries of 
the fancy. In a speech before the Duma the 
Deputy Dzubinsky, himself a non-Jew, offered this 
testimony: 

**As a representative of our Fifth Siberian Division I 
was myself on the scene and can testify with what in- 



26 THEJEWPAYS 

credible cruelty the expulsion of the Jews from the 
Province of Radom took place. The whole population 
was driven out within a few hours during the night. At 
11 o'clock the people were informed that they had to 
leave, with a threat that any one found at daybreak 
would be hanged. And so in the darkness of the night 
began the exodus of the Jews to the nearest town, Ilzha, 
thirty versts away. Old men, invalids and paralytics had 
to be carried on people's arms because there were no 
vehicles. 

"The police and the gendarmes treated the Jewish 
refugees precisely like criminals. At one station, for 
instance, the Jewish Commission of Homel was not even 
allowed to approach the trains to render aid to the 
refugees or to give them food and water. In one case 
a train which was conveying the victims was com- 
pletely sealed and when finally opened most of the in- 
mates were found half dead, sixteen down with scarlet 
fever and one with typhus. . . . 

"In some places the governors simply made sport of 
the innocent victims; among those who particularly dis- 
tinguished themselves were the governors of Poltava, 
Minsk, and Ekaterinoslav . . . who illegally took away 
the passports of the victims and substituted provisional 
certificates instructing them to appear at given places in 
one of five provinces at a given date. When they pre- 
sented themselves at these designated places they were 
shuttled back and forth from point to point at the 
whim or caprice of local officials. 

"In Poltava the Jewish Relief Committee was officially 
reprimanded by the governor for assuming the name 
'Committee for the Aid of Jewish Sufferers from the 
War,' and ordered to rename itself 'Committee to Aid the 




DANGEROUS ENEMIES 



JEWSANDWAR 27 

Expelled' on the ground, as stated explicitly in the order, 
that the Jews had been expelled because they were po- 
litically unreliable — and, therefore, presumably, de- 
served no help." ^ 

From the foregoing it will readily be seen that 
what the Jews of America were called upon to 
cope with was something enormously greater than 
the mere relief of a civil population suffering the 
consequence of a great war. The problem of 
America in dealing with Belgium was of that or- 
dinary variety. The situation of the Jews in the 
Russian Empire was in an entirely separate class. 
Only the first act in this drama can in any way be 
compared with it. The second act, however, was 
but incidentally, as I have ventured to say before, 
a condition created by international hostilities. It 
was obviously and fundamentally the rescuing of 
an entire people from an ancient conspiracy en- 
deavoring to accomplish its dastardly purpose in 
the chaos and darkness of a world upheaval. 
What the Jews of Eastern Europe were threatened 
with was not the temporary suffering and decima- 
tion inevitable in war, but the total extermination by 
ingenious and rapid torture of a whole race. Hap- 
pily, the eyes of the world, for all its terrifying 
preoccupations, could pierce through this artifi- 

^ Op. cit,y pp. 62-3. Quoted from Evreyskaya Zhizn, Aug. 9, 
1915. 



28 THE JEW PAYS 

cially erected opaque barrier, and to a degree in- 
tervene. The climax of the piece was yet to be 
enacted. Bolshevism, that ingenious universal 
weapon invented by a generous Providence for the 
use of reactionaries everywhere, had not yet been 
perfected. How American Jewry and the decent 
lovers of justice and kindliness in the world are to 
cope with this new engine of misrepresentation is 
the problem that the Great War hands on to the 
coming period of peace. 



CHAPTER III 

THE RELIANCE OF THE JEW IN 
THE NEW WORLD 

FOR more than a generation past the remnant 
of oppressed Jewry in the Old World has had 
its eyes turned to the West for salvation. With 
but little exaggeration it may be said that every 
Jew in Europe (failing the realization of the Zion- 
ist hope) contemplates America as his ultimate 
home. The Jews, more than any other unemanci- 
pated race, have taken the American experiment and 
the American tradition to his heart. To a greater 
degree than any other they have listened to the 
promise of the New World and accepted it literally. 
It should not be hard to understand why, when one 
keeps in mind that European Jewry has had the 
longest and bitterest career of oppression of all the 
peoples of the Old World. 

But beyond the fond dream of some day be- 
coming an American himself, the common man 
overseas, and particularly the Jew, has looked upon 
the New World as some sort of a divinely appointed 

29 



30 THE JEW PAYS 

refuge whither his kin might betake themselves to 
escape the terrible uncertainty of existence in the 
ancient home and to come forward in time of need 
with proffers of counsel and material assistance. 

Among European Jewry this is one of the vivid 
portraitures of America — that she is a land where 
a part of the Jewish people have prospered and 
been spared the struggles and sufferings of their 
fellows abroad, so that they might be ready in 
emergencies to help those whom they had left be- 
hind. It is characteristic of Jewish solidarity that 
the ghettoes have ever regarded their more for- 
tunate sons in free and prosperous lands as if they 
still were part and parcel of the communal body 
with all the responsibility of unbroken member- 
ship. The East-European Jew experiences a per- 
sonal gratification in the thought that the children 
of his people are sharing the freedom and plenty 
of the far-away Republic; and he can face the 
prospect of dire misfortune with the thought that 
his brethren in blood and faith are so situated that 
they can come to his relief. 

It is the modern version of the ancient dream of 
the Messiah. Even with the devoutest in the Euro- 
pean ghettoes, whose faith in the divine promise 
of a restored Israel is undiminished, this shift from 
the traditional trust in a legendary savior coming 
out of the East, to reliance upon a more realistic 



RELIANCEOFTHEJEW 31 

Providence in the Western Hemisphere is unmis- 
takable. In the past thirty or forty years the Jew- 
ries of Russia and Austria and Rumania turned 
ever more in their distress toward the nations of 
the West, and especially to America, as to the mold- 
ers of their destiny. The rehabilitation of Pales- 
tine, the complex relations between Jews and local 
authority, the transfer of millions of their numbers 
to more liberal climes when life in their native 
homes became unbearable, the intervention of tlie 
decent opinion of the world in times of renewed 
oppression — in emergencies of endless variety, the 
Jew has become accustomed to look for help to his 
influential fellows in the democracies of Western 
Europe and the United States. 

I am not certain whether the Jews of America 
have always been very keenly ^live to this confi- 
dence on the part of their less fortunate brethren 
in the old countries. If they have not, they con- 
stitute a striking exception to the other peoples and 
races who make up the American nation. For 
among all other groups in the United States there 
is a very vivid consciousness of the responsibility 
that they bear toward the destiny of their kin in 
the homeland. We are accustomed to the sympa- 
thy of Irishmen and Germans in America with the 
proper strivings of their peoples in the Old World ; 
but in the past few years we have seen an even 



32 THE JEW PAYS 

more striking demonstration of these family ties 
between European peoples and their American 
kinsfolk in the lively participation (countenanced 
and even encouraged by our Government) of Poles 
and Bohemians, Russians and Jugo-Slavs, Ruman- 
ians and Ukrainians in the nationalistic and hu- 
manitarian movements of their homelands. Never 
before in the career of this country had groups of 
European origin so persistently and openly at- 
tempted to advance the legitimate interests of their 
native countries. 

Everywhere in the Old World America has be- 
come, by countless demonstrations, the shining hope 
of the unfortunate. At least it was so until we 
entered the war. Not alone the direct kin of Euro- 
pean nations, but the American people as a whole, 
have time and again poured out their hearts and 
their purses to the victims of sudden disaster. 
When earthquakes shook villages from their 
foundations, when volcanoes left multitudes home- 
less and helpless, when great fires destroyed cities 
and cast their inhabitants upon the mercy of the 
elements; in famine, in wars and in pogroms, the 
American Government, on behalf of the American 
people, seldom failed to respond with a generous 
hand to the call of the suffering. America seemed 
to be the philanthropist among the nations, just as 
she had been for a century the model of revolution 



RELIANCEOFTHEJEW 33 

and popular aspiration to liberty and the asylum 
of heroes and rebels against tyranny. And the 
poor and oppressed and the disinherited of the 
earth came to regard her as something more than 
a land of liberty and wealth. She became in their 
minds a friend and a prop in adversity. 

Precisely as an individual family in the Old 
World sends forth one of its younger members to 
blaze the trail for the entire group and relies upon 
him later to draw the group after him to the New 
World and to make their lot more tolerable in the 
interval, so European Jewry has, metaphorically, 
sent forth portions of itself to America as a meas- 
ure of security against future needs. The first of 
their pioneer-pilgrims were a handful of the so- 
named Spanish and Portuguese Sephardic Jews. 
In the middle of the last century the delegation 
was chosen from among the defeated democracy of 
the German kingdoms and dukedoms. And both, 
whether consciously or not, embarked as a kind of 
advance guard of the great Jewish community of 
the European continent. They settled in the New 
World and became the inheritors of the liberty 
and the material prosperity for the lack of which 
they had deserted the scenes of their childhood. 
Had it not been for the persistence of the Russian 
despotism with its recurrent measures of oppres- 
sion and its petty aping neighbors — above all, had 



34 THE JEW PAYS 

it not been for the suddan calamity of 191 \ 
American Jewry might, I suspect, have become ut- 
terly detached from its Old World ties and forgot- 
ten its mission and its responsibility. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE EARLIEST RESPONSE 

GERMANY declared war on Russia on the 1st 
of August, and within scarcely more than a 
fortnight New York City witnessed its first con- 
ference on behalf of the victims. I am not statis- 
tically certain that this meeting of a group of im- 
migrant Jews was the very first to consider the prob- 
lem for relieving war sufferers, but I venture the 
opinion that if any gathering preceded them the 
people who promoted it were equipped with seven 
league boots. The Jewish race has a tradition and 
a deserved reputation in benevolence which no 
other people can match, and its record is an out- 
growth of its two thousand years of almost contin- 
uous oppression and suffering. There is no Jew- 
ish community anywhere in the world that is not 
prepared at any moment of the day and as a part of 
its ordinary routine, to respond to a call for help 
from its less fortunate brethren in one quarter or 
another. The Jews of America, especially, be- 
cause of their fortunate position socially and eco- 
nomically, have in the past generation received an 

35 



36 THE JEW PAYS 

education and developed a technique in the process 
of relieving suffering which is unique even among 
Jews. Beginning with the Russian massacres of 
1881 and the migration of the masses of survivors 
which ensued upon them, the Jews of America have 
undergone a regimen of training of the most thor- 
oughgoing sort and which culminated in the pres- 
ent emergency. Eighteen eighty-one was but a 
starter. It was followed in rapid succession by 
the misery of the Galicians, the movement from 
Rumania, and more recently by the pogroms which 
preceded and accompanied and followed upon the 
revolution of 1905. So that when 1914 came 
along with its budget of horrors the philanthropic 
Jewish purse in America was well filled and ready. 
It was especially fitting that orthodox Jewry 
should be the first to step into the breach. For it 
is this element along with another group which was 
later to be organized into the People's Relief Com- 
mittee, which was bound by the closest ties of kin- 
ship to the sufi'erers abroad. Orthodox Jewry in 
America consists almost solely of Eastern Euro- 
peans — of the very people on whose behalf the 
relief expeditions of the past generation were in- 
stituted. For the most part, the victims of the 
present war are their own blood relatives. The 
funds which they collected went directly to care 
for the comforts of the brothers and sisters and the 



EARLIEST RESPONSE 37 

fathers and mothers of the donors. Moreover, this 
was the first great opportunity that this group had 
had of contributing materially and on an organized 
scale to the welfare of that part of the Jewish peo- 
ple which still remained under the yoke from which 
they had escaped. 

How readily and magnificently they met this 
opportunity is now a matter of proud record. For 
the initial gathering of the 18th of August which 
was of a preliminary character, was followed a 
month later by a much more representative meeting 
at which plans for an organization were actually 
outlined and an immediate attempt made to rally 
kindred groups throughout the United States. It 
happened that the solemn season of the New Year 
and the Day of Atonement was approaching. 
Therefore the meeting proceeded to address tele- 
grams to some hundred religious bodies in as many 
cities, urging them to turn the fast-days to account 
by issuing appeals to their respective congregations 
on behalf of the war sufferers on those days. 
Within two months of the outbreak of the war an 
establishment was actually in operation with of- 
fices in New York and with machinery for collect- 
ing funds installed in many ends of the country. 
The organization took the name of the Central Com- 
mittee for the Relief of Jews Suffering Through 
the War. 



38 THE JEW PAYS 

These early meetings and the men and women 
who gathered at them gave the new organization the 
tone and temper which they have preserved through 
their honorable career down to the present mo- 
ment. They set their stamp not only upon the 
type of the personnel in the organization, but to a 
very significant degree also they laid the founda- 
tions of its approach and its methodology. The 
Central Relief Committee had and still has its con- 
stituency in that element of immigrant Jewry which 
distinguishes itself primarily by its adherence to 
the ancient Jewish faith and tradition. On the 
one side it is flanked by the reform group (which is 
Western European by origin), and on the other side 
by the great working mass whose affiliations are 
with tlie labor unions and kindred movements. 
The rank and file of the Central Committee are, 
socially and by tradition, the middle class. They 
consist in the main of the storekeeper and the small 
business man. Spiritually they belong in the camp 
of the traditional faith and ritual. Their leader- 
ship is preeminently to be found among the rabbis 
of the old dispensation and in a small but power- 
ful group of intellectuals who constitute the mod- 
ern prop of the synagogue. It is a middle class 
group not merely by antecedents and aspirations, 
ijut by the nature of its position in the Jewish com- 
munity as well. It is a transition element, stand- 



EARLIEST RESPONSE 39 

ing as it does between the more Americanized 
Western European wing and the class-conscious 
idealistic working party of the Left. Except for 
the constant progress of Jewish immigration into 
the United States, its numbers would have been 
increasingly thinning out by an inevitable process 
of assimilation and absorption into the other two 
groups. In actual fact, there can be no doubt that 
it is a diminishing body and that of all immigrant 
groups it is having the hardest struggle to survive 
the corroding influences of the American environ- 
ment. 

The reader should keep this characterization in 
mind in estimating the service of this committee. 
There is a disposition in certain circles to appraise 
the institution by a consideration of mere financial 
figures detached from their human implications, 
and thus to minimize the immense actual service 
which they represent. It has been said over and 
over again that there is no logical necessity for the 
existence of the organization at all. Considering 
its constituency, the argument runs, the amounts 
that have been collected by the organization could 
have been doubled or even quadrupled if the work 
had been conducted by the two other agencies in 
the field. Appeals for funds addressed to the 
membership of the Central Committee would have 
carried vastly more weight, according to its critics, 



40 THE JEW PAYS 

if they had emanated from the great influential 
leaders of the American Jewish Relief Committee. 
I am inclined to recognize the validity of much of 
this reasoning, but I cannot forget a number of fac- 
tors on the other side which tend strongly to coun- 
terbalance the greater part of this adverse attitude. 
I cannot forget that the Central Relief Committee 
was the first organization to heed the call of the 
sufferers abroad; that its membership, both by 
origin and mental constitution, are excellently 
equipped to understand the needs of their unhappy 
kinsfolk, and above all, that the social and spiritual 
by-products of any such enterprise as they had been 
engaged in are of even greater worth than the en- 
terprise itself, and that its usefulness in this sense 
could not have been achieved for it by any other 
agency. Nevertheless, I am strongly of the opin- 
ion that a coalescence of the Central and American 
Relief Committees, at this time at least, would be 
of immeasurable benefit to the cause for which 
botli are laboring. The by-products of which I 
just spoke — the more thorough consolidation of 
orthodox Jewry in the United States, the revival 
of Jewish consciousness in individuals scattered 
far and wide in the remote ends of the land, the 
inculcation of a sense of responsibility on the part 
of such individuals, the development of an esprit 
de corps and a temper of mutual aid, and in par- 



EARLIEST RESPONSE 41 

ticular, the heightening of the esteem for the im- 
migrant Jew on the part of his neighbors wherever 
he may live in America — are things of enormous 
significance ; but they now belong to history. They 
are achievements which may well make the Central 
Committee and its affiliated organizations proud of 
their record. But the future also has its claims; 
and for the future I can conceive of nothing more 
urgent than a union, as complete as may be, of the 
two bodies which have so much in common. In- 
deed, an organic alliance between the Central Com- 
mittee and the American would in itself be an ex- 
pression of that spirit of accommodation and co- 
operation which is to be reckoned as the principal 
benefit accruing to the American Jew in the 
process of his generous efforts for his brethren in 
Europe. 

The religious cast of the newly formed com- 
mittee at once began to color its activities. Begin- 
ning with its appeal to orthodox synagogues and 
their congregations all over the country, to which 
I referred above, the management proceeded to 
avail itself of whatever materials it could cull from 
the religious consciousness of its people and to turn 
them into assets for consolidating the structure of 
its tragic undertaking. The very history and tra- 
dition of the Jewish people furnished a tremendous 
store-house of memories and symbols which were 



42 THEJEWPAYS 

ready at hand to be converted into emotional stim- 
uli. The very speech of ancient Israel in all its 
eloquent and touching modulations had been some- 
how prophetically fashioned for this supreme hour. 
The trained organizer, equipped with a knowledge 
of the Jewish soul, could turn to the sacred books 
and find therein texts without number for his pur- 
pose. One-quarter of the content of the Bible is 
a record of Jewish struggle and sorrow, and fairly 
teems with gems in the literature of exhortation 
and appeal to compassion. Half the Jewish fasts 
and feasts are redolent of exile and oppression 
and the threat of national extermination. The 
Passover service begins with an invitation to the 
hungry and the stricken to come and partake of 
the bread and prosperity of their more fortunate 
brethren. The New Year and the Day of Atone- 
ment are essentially days of repentance, and in the 
Jewish tradition repentance ever begins with love 
and charity toward one's neighbor. The Feast of 
Purim celebrates the memory of a man and a 
woman who were instrumental in rescuing the peo- 
ple of Israel from annihilation; and the Ninth of 
Ab is a fast of mourning over the destruction of 
the national life. No people can match this ac- 
cumulation of tragic record. 

The management of the Central Relief Commit- 
tee had a vivid consciousness of the value of its 



EARLIEST RESPONSE 43 

resources and it promptly set about to make the 
most of them. It organized the rabbinical fra- 
ternity into a kind of auxiliary corps, and each 
rabbi in turn transformed his congregation into 
a subsidiary relief committee for raising funds. 
Scarcely a service was allowed to pass without 
some sort of reminder of the unspeakable events 
abroad. The printed matter whxh was circulated 
to every comer of the country was interlarded with 
references to the present woes of Israel in the lan- 
guage of the past. Each single day almost of the 
ancient calendar furnished some pretext for con- 
trasting the splendid record of ancient unity with 
the contemporary danger of disintegration and dis- 
appearance. Traditional phrases, known to every 
Jewish child, were culled from venerable texts 
and found new applications in the service of 
the war victims. 

Nor did the committee confine itself to the in- 
strumentalities provided for it by the past. It 
early began to make an astute use of American 
custom and mode of life, in so far as these af- 
fected their immigrant constituency. In the sum- 
mer, as an instance, the vacation hunters were cir- 
cularized with an appeal which read, "Enjoy your 
vacation but remember that others need bread." 
It was one of the members of this organization 
who first saw the possibilities of the saving stamp 



44 THE JEW PAYS 

as an aid in collecting money. The device of get- 
ting storekeepers to contribute certain percentages 
of their sales on given days to the Cause, v^hile not 
invented by this body, was put by it to excellent 
use. And finally it was this group of alien men 
and women, most of whom had scarcely acquired 
the use of the English language, that courageously 
presented its petition to the President of the United 
States for an official proclamation from him setting 
aside a Jewish Relief Day on the 4th of October, 
1914. The proclamation vms subsequently repro- 
duced in a variety of forms and was the means of 
directing untold hundreds of thousands of dol- 
lars into the coffers of the sufferers of Eastern 
Europe and Asia Minor. 



CHAPTER V 

AMERICA TO THE RESCUE 

THE Central Relief Committee had been but a 
gauge of the state of feeling in American 
Jewry upon the outbreak of the European war and 
the calamity to the Jewish people abroad which it 
was bound to bring in its trail. It had been quite 
natural that the tragedy to the Old World ghetto 
should reecho first and most profoundly in its 
counterpart in the New. But ere long the wave of 
horror and sympathy spread to the remotest comers 
of the great Jewish community in America and gave 
impetus to an immense undertaking to cope with 
the emergency. On the 25th of October, 1914 — 
less than three months after the opening of hos- 
tilities, — Mr. Louis Marshall made the first attempt 
to enlist the organized effort of American Jewry 
in the great task. As the President of the most in- 
fluential Jewish body in America — the American 
Jewish Committee, — he invited the leading Jewish 
men and women in commerce, philanthropy and af- 
fairs to a meeting at the Temple Emanu-El. No 
more representative body had, I daresay, ever been 

45 



46 THE JEW PAYS 

brought together in the history of Jews in America. 
Platform and floor alike were crowded with men as 
well as women whose names have become known 
far beyond the confines of not only their racial 
group but of America herself. It was a meeting 
almost wholly of world figures — men noted for 
huge industrial and financial enterprises; men 
whose names had been for a quarter of a century 
identified with international benevolences, leaders 
in religion and jurisprudence, commerce and sci- 
ence — men for the most part whose names had be- 
come a word to conjure with in the remotest cor- 
ners of the earth. 

Little parliamentary claptrap marked the delib- 
erations of this distinguished gathering. The 
business in hand was as clear as it was urgent, and 
there was in consequence a unanimity of purpose 
and procedure not always characteristic, alas, of 
Jewish public affairs. It required scarcely any 
time to crystallize an organization, and there de- 
veloped no -opposition or partisanship in the choice 
of its directing officers. The new body was con- 
ceived of as an off-shoot and a subsidiary of the 
American Jewish Committee, and Mr. Louis 
Marshall, for this as well as for many other and 
better reasons was made the Chairman; with Mr. 
Felix M. Warburg as Treasurer and Mr. Cyrus L. 
Sulzberger as Secretary. 



TO THE RESCUE 47 

For a twofold reason the newly formed com- 
mittee decided to use existing machinery in the 
pursuit of its task. To begin with, no one had the 
remotest notion of the length of time during which 
the organization would be necessary. It was rather 
hoped that the war and its consequences to Eu- 
ropean Jews would be of short duration. More- 
over the employment of agencies already estab- 
lished would save time. The need over there was 
too urgent to wait upon the creation of special in- 
strumentalities. Hence Mr. Sulzberger who as the 
Secretary was charged with the practical elabora- 
tion of the plans of the body invited the Industrial 
Removal Office and its directorate to take over at 
least for the time being the affairs of the American 
Jewish Relief Committee. The choice was a happy 
one in a variety of ways. Of all the existing Jew- 
ish philanthropies the I. R. 0. was the one like- 
liest to be rendered inoperative as a result of the 
war. It was an institution whose object had been 
for many years past to assist the great masses of 
Jewish immigrants to spread inland from the ports. 
The war promised to put a sudden and at least a 
temporary stop to Jewish immigration. Here, 
then, was a peace establishment which could with 
the least dislocation be turned to uses created by 
war. Most important of all, Mr. David M. Dress- 
ier, the Director of the organization, had demon- 



48 THEJEWPAYS 

strated by years of service his capacity for adapting 
himself to untried tasks of magnitude and im- 
portance. Mr. Bressler hesitated for a time. He 
was willing enough to turn over his office but he 
was not certain, in his modesty, whether he was al- 
together qualified to become the directing head of 
an undertaking as vast and complex as this one was 
likely to become. Moreover, he had for some time 
been contemplating a change in his own career and 
he considered this a good time to effect it. Now 
that, for the first time since the organization of the 
Industrial Removal Office, a lull was about to occur 
in its aflfairs, it might be well for him to try his 
energies upon more remunerative employments. 
But Mr. Sulzberger would brook no pleas of either 
modesty or self-interest; and after long persuasion 
Mr. Bressler became the Director of the new Relief 
Committee with the title of Assistant Secretary. 

I have carefully studied the records of my ma- 
terial and they leave little doubt in my mind that 
the tremendous success and influence of the or- 
ganization in the past five years has rested on the 
foundations laid for it during these early months 
of Mr. Bressler's incumbency. Virtually without 
exception all the ingenious devices and instrumen- 
talities which were employed with such incredible 
efficiency later on were either actually elaborated 
or at least conceived during this early period. 



TO THE RESCUE 49 

What followed later was in large measure a states- 
manlike expansion and application of policies 
initiated at the beginning. I have no wish to clut- 
ter my account of a unique and stirring movement 
among the Jews of America with controversies, and 
least of all do I desire to be partial to individuals. 
Wherever the achievements and contributions of 
persons or loyal groups in the great Cause are in 
question, I have no other thought but to assign 
credit v/here it belongs. And I have no hesitation 
in stating my conclusions that the present splendid 
structure rests very securely on the underpinnings 
of its early Director. 

Thus, for instance, the very bone and sinew of 
the great organism as we know it to-day consists 
in a country-wide system of state committees and 
county and local sub-committees, all of which center 
in the home office at New York; and this intricate 
and difficult establishment had its inception during 
the first six months of the Committee's existence. 
As a conception, it is, to be sure, one of the most 
elementary devices in large-scale organization; but 
Mr. Bressler's part in its elaboration went consid- 
erably beyond the mere inception. When the Com- 
mittee made its historic departure three years later 
there was little to alter in its basic and original 
texture. The energies generated at that time were 
directed chiefly to an intensification of the process. 



50 THEJEWPAYS 

Mr. Bressler has himself admitted with character- 
istic frankness that neither he himself nor any one 
else that he can think of could have carried the 
work to the great heights which it has attained in the 
past two years under its recent management. But 
there can be no two opinions of the impetus which 
the Committee received from him in its earliest 
endeavors. Just what share of its effectiveness is 
due to him and, just what contributions have come 
from other sources, it will be quite impossible at 
this time to determine. Dr. J. L. Magness, Mr. 
Sulzberger and no end of others have, I know, 
labored devotedly with time and energy toward the 
general result. But there is no unfairness, I take 
it, in the custom of historians to lump the progress 
of an era under the name of its most active and 
titular administrator. 

It was, as far as I can gather, the Assistant Secre- 
tary who in December, 1915, proposed that great 
historic mass meeting which in effect furnished the 
motive power of the undertaking for the next two 
years. That meeting was a milestone not alone in 
the career of the American Jewish Relief Commit- 
tee nor merely in the annals of Jewish generosity. 
It marked an era in the career of the Jew in 
America. I have been present at gatherings, as- 
semblies and conventions of many sorts where en- 
thusiasm ran high; but there has been nothing in 



TO THE RESCUE 51 

my experience to equal that. This was not a mere 
mass meeting; it was one of those events which 
from time to time in the history of Israel have 
stirred an entire people to its foundations and 
marked a departure in its career. 

The meeting was held in Carnegie Hall and it 
was made notable by at least three striking features. 
To begin with, the preliminary arrangements were 
novel. Remembering its purpose, Mr. Bressler 
and his co-workers were determined that, as far as 
it could be managed, no seat in the hall should be 
occupied by any one except a prospective generous 
contributor. Therefore it was announced in the 
press that no seats would be had at the door. Tick- 
ets could be obtained only by asking for them in 
advance. Therefore, again, the management must 
see to it that men and women of large means were 
properly inspired with the desire to attend. And 
the line was, in consequence, very lavishly and ap- 
petizingly baited. The names printed on the pro- 
gram constituted a catalogue of America's finest 
platform orators. The result, as Mr. Bressler tells 
me, was that scarcely any Jew of pecuniary im- 
portance was missing when the meeting was called, 
and that until the very hour when the doors were 
to be opened requests by telephone and messenger 
kept pouring in to the office of the Committee for 
tickets and more tickets. But it turned out that a 



52 THE JEW PAYS 

considerable number of the speakers as announced 
had failed to appear and this was one more of the 
unique characteristics of the occasion; for it left 
the field wide open to that unique orator in Jewry 
whose voice and whose prophet-like sincerity are 
reminiscent of the golden age of Hebrew eloquence. 
The speaking progressed as if by fore-thought to 
a more and more noble pitch, until it culminated in 
a climax when Dr. Judah L. Magnes arose before 
the great audience and delivered what was on all 
hands regarded as the most moving appeal that 
American Jews had ever listened to. 

And then followed the third distinguishing 
feature of the evening. Never had an audience of 
well-to-do, comfortable and distinguished people 
been so thoroughly lifted out of their complacency. 
As Dr. Magnes proceeded from point to point in 
his masterly portraiture of the frightful scenes in 
the homelands of Jewry, one could hear women in 
every comer of the Hall softly sobbing until, as 
the speaker reached the end, the entire assemblage 
had thrown all reserve to the winds. Men arose in 
their seats and waved their hands toward the plat- 
form in an access of emotion, begging to be per- 
mitted to help. Women with tear-stained faces 
nervously wrenched jewels from their ears and 
fingers and tossed them upon the platform. At a 
signal from the speaker the ushers moved up the 



TO THE RESCUE 53 

aisles with their baskets to take up the cash and 
checks and pledges which were in all parts of the 
hall being spontaneously held aloft. An elderly 
man who had been standing in a comer by the door 
and who later proved to be a cap-maker out of 
work, elbowed his way through the throng and 
upon reaching the platform begged Dr. Magnes to 
accept the nickel he had saved for his carfare. 
"How," he said in a tremulous voice, "can I think 
of riding luxuriously in the car when my brothers 
and sisters back in the old country are suffering!" 
Until 2 o'clock that morning officials and ushers 
stayed in the hall to count the collections. 

This first Carnegie Hall mass meeting was a 
barometer indicating the extent to which American 
Jewry was ready to succor its unfortunate fellows in 
Europe. To be sure, its audience had consisted 
almost entirely of New Yorkers. None the less, its 
splendid spirit and achievements left no doubt in 
tlie minds of the men and women who had or- 
ganized it that what New York was willing to do, 
the rest of the country would surely be prepared 
to match proportionately. Hence the Campaign 
Committee decided that its previous goal of one 
million dollars should be raised to three millions. 
A vast quantity of stationery which had been 
printed for publicity purposes had to be the next 
day destroyed so as not to divulge the original 



54 THE JEW PAYS 

objective of the campaign. Two days later as new 
contributions and pledges began to pour into the 
offices of the organization, the Committee once 
more realized how modest its hopes had been and 
moved its quota up to five millions. It goes with- 
out saying that this latest goal was more than 
attained. But what was of even greater sig- 
nificance than the mere collection of huge funds 
was the consolidation of the Jewish community in 
the United States into a more unified body. The 
organization of committees in distant cities went 
on apace and almost without effort from the central 
office. It became obvious even at this early date 
that the sheer progress of the fund-raising cam- 
paign would prove a far more vital factor in ex- 
tending the organization than any direct attempt at 
setting up subsidiary agencies. 

The rapid advance of the movement throughout 
the country expressed itself in a growing and in- 
sistent demand from every comer of the land for 
speakers and for literature. Dr. Magnes's address 
had been printed and sent broadcast and, as was to 
be foreseen, there immediately arose a clamor 
for his presence and his eloquence. "We are try- 
ing to do our share in our city," so the demand 
usually ran, "and if you will only send us Dr. 
Magnes we will guarantee that we will over-sub- 
scritc any quota that you may assign us." But 



TO THE RESCUE 55 

Dr. Magnes could not, obviously, be sent every- 
vvhere. Therefore Mr. Bressler resolved to mul- 
tiply his rare asset. New York and other cities 
were rich in forensic resources. There was an 
abundance of both talent and fame which were 
for the moment lying fallow and which could by 
proper diplomatic method and skillful direction be 
turned to account. The directorate be^ran wUh the 
salient figures. It enlist^^d t^e cooppT-f^tion of rn^n 
of the caliber of Mr. Nathan Straus, Mr. Jacob H. 
Schiff, Mr. Louis Marshall. But these also were 
limited in number and restricted by time and space, 
and the demand for them was increasing from 
scores to hundreds. It became therefore necessary 
to recruit not merely leading personalities but all 
the talent that could be mustered. Bv the time 
the year was over the American Jewish Relief Com- 
mittee had organized a speakers' bureau which 
could be set up favorably against any lyceum or 
Chautauqua. 



CHAPTER VI 

SLOW PROGRESS 

FOR three years the movement progressed in 
this fashion. Millions of money were being 
collected. Enthusiasm was running high and the 
funds were actually reaching their destination and 
accomplishing all and more than could be looked 
for. But somehow the feeling began to grow 
among the leaders as well as the rank and file that 
the machinery was not developing all the power 
that it might. To begin with, the need had become 
increasingly greater since 1914 while the means, 
though also expanding, had not kept pace. It be- 
gan to look as if one were trying to fill a leaking 
barrel with a spoon. Moreover, the spirit of giv- 
ing, which had been educated to an undreamed-of 
degree since the opening of hostilities, was not ex- 
pressing itself in sufficiently substantial form. The 
engine, as it were, was turning and spinning mer- 
rily, but it was not hooked up to the axle. Clearly, 
the time had come for more ambitious demands. 
It the technique that had been hitherto followed was 
adequate, then something must be done to apply it 

56 



SLOW PROGRESS 57 

more vigorously. It was not at all that there was 
inefficiency, or that anything was out of gear. Staff 
and organization were working wholeheartedly 
and devotedly, but it was a structure that had been 
devised to meet the emergencies of a brief war with 
proportionately moderate needs. The war had de- 
veloped into one of the longest in modem times. 
Therefore an altogether new model of relief ma- 
chinery must be invented and set in operation to 
cope with the unforeseen state of affairs. 

It was to discuss this question that the little meet- 
ing which was held immediately following the 
resignation of Mr. Bressler, heretofore the director 
of the organization, was called. The gathering was 
quietly brought together on a memorable Sunday 
in December, and its deliberations were attended by 
a few men whom I should estimate as the intellect 
of the movement and whose names I therefore shall 
desist from mentioning. It was agreed before the 
discussion had progressed very far that two dis- 
tinct and separate problems must be solved if the 
projected new machinery was to be set in motion 
and kept going. The first of these was the injection 
of new blood into the organism. A. man must be 
found somewhere who had latent genius rather than 
rast experience. Vast experience, indeed, it wai 
rtalized, might be a handicap. The businesi of 
collecting money had a tendency to smother the 



58 THE JEW PAYS 

energy that propelled it. The qualifications, there- 
fore, of the new motive mind were few and simple 
as compared with the weaknesses that might dis- 
qualify it. The new relief engineer — for that is 
a precise description of what the new director ought 
to measure up to— must be simply a young man 
with inexhaustible energy and resourcefulness, and 
be equipped with a sense of artistic reserve. What 
he must not be, was a whole chain of things. He 
must not be known too well, he must not be too 
experienced, he must not be a business man. Cer- 
tainly, he must not be an advertising man or a pro- 
fessional moneygatherer. In a word, he must not 
be stale. He must come to his task fresh and en- 
thusiastic and unhampered. 

Such was the mold into which the new director 
must fit. The practical problem was to discover 
somewhere, somehow, such a paragon. It was 
remarked with a twinkle by one of the conferees 
that the social service profession was not given 
to breeding paragons. A who is who was drawn 
up of all the philanthropic experts in the land that 
could be thought of, and an inquisition into their 
past records, their present status and their future 
possibilities was instituted. As they passed in re- 
view, each was weighed in the balance and his 
measure minutely taken. But the majority of those 
who promised to qualify were found to be already 



SLOW PROGRESS 59 

engaged in some indispensable task; and the rest 
were found wanting in one direction or another. 
The field of choice was thus extremely limited and 
kept narrowing down further and further until but 
two candidates remained. One of these was a Mr. 
Jacob Billikopf, the director of Jewish communal 
activities in Kansas City. It was decided that he 
should be requisitioned. 

Mr. Billikopf had given evidence of his ability 
to meet the emergency, of very striking promise. 
It was not so much the positive achievement in his 
career that was reassuring as the type of thing to 
which he had inclined. There was a quality about 
the tasks he had carried through quite out of the 
usual. He had evinced a capacity for meeting the 
greatest assortment of men and women on their 
own ground. Professionally the manager of a 
philanthropy, he had gone far afield in community 
enterprises which had no sort of relation with char- 
itable institutions. Scarcely known outside his 
own city, or at best, his own state, he had by sheer 
personality attained a vast friendship among the 
leaders in his community. Neither had he con- 
fined himself primarily to Jewish enterprises. He 
had made himself one of the most valuable men in 
that great undertaking known as the Galveston 
Movement the purpose of which had been to de- 
flect the current of Jewish immigration from the 



60 THE JEW PAYS 

Atlantic seaboard to the interior. He had been the 
prime mover, along with Mr. Frank P. Walsh, in 
establishing the Board of Public Welfare — a splen- 
did statesmanlike enterprise — which, largely 
through the impetus he gave it, had in a very brief 
time developed into a national project. Person- 
ality and tact and an endurance which knew 
scarcely any bounds were the principal qualities 
of the director of the Jewish philanthropies of 
Kansas City; they happened also to be the principal 
qualifications of the prospective new engineer of 
the American Jewish Relief Committee. It was 
determined to telegraph for Mr. Billikopf. 

But of him we shall see more anon and we shall 
be able to judge him dynamically. Meantime the 
select gathering which determined upon calling him 
was confronted with another problem. Even a 
latent prodigy could not be expected to attain the 
results which conditions overseas demanded unless 
he were to have the cooperation of a constituency 
alive to its responsibility. The new director, as- 
suming that he could be got, could well be relied 
on to rouse his constituency to any desired plane of 
enthusiasm. None the less, much time might be 
saved and no end of misery be forestalled if the 
ground could be somewhat prepared in advance 
of his arrival. What seemed to be the fundamen- 
tal need of the moment in the opinion of the meet- 



SLOW PROGRESS 61 

ing was the dramatization of the movement in such 
a manner that it would transform the potential 
spirit of the American Jewish community into 
something positive and kinetic. Events abroad 
were, to be sure, all too stirring, but the experi- 
ences of the past three years had proven that the 
impulse of generosity will carry vastly farther if 
it is motivated by home influences. The tale of 
suffering in distant countries, if too often repeated, 
will in time pall and steadily weaken in emotional 
quality; but it will be found by actual test that a 
man's generosity will multiply itself endlessly if 
it is carefully stimulated to emulation. This is no 
reflection upon the quality of mercy; it is only a 
statement of fact in human psychology. 

The usual array of schemes and suggestions were 
laid before the house. But they had all been 
tried. The great publicity campaigns; gigantic, 
stormy mass meetings; new variations in the style 
of appeal — everything had become stale. It was 
decided to wait until the new director arrived. 
He arrived, after much persuading and telegraph- 
ing, in the middle of February. Thereupon the 
caucus that had elected him was reconvened. Mr. 
Billikopf was asked what the approaching cam- 
paign ought to yield. He replied with an ulti- 
matum: "I will have nothing to do with it if the 
quota for the country is below ten millions." The 



62 THE JEW PAYS 

conference was a bit taken aback. It had been a 
struggle the year before to raise half that amount, 
and this year of all years, with America herself 
about to enter the war, and new demands being 
constantly made upon the popular purse, it seemed 
impossible. Again, the dramatization of the cause 
was broached. Some one had an inspiration. 
What was needed, he argued, was not so much 
propaganda or publicity, but some great startling 
event here at home that would leaven the half -inert 
Jewry of America and set its spirit seething with 
a vivid realization of its duty and its opportunity. 
If only some leader of sufficient means could be 
persuaded to leap over the traditional bounds 
of generosity and set some new, some unpre- 
cedented mark. A million dollars — just one 
single donation of that round fancy-gripping fig- 
ure — if that could be flashed over the country, it 
would amount to a break with the past and be a 
new departure in giving. It would be the needed 
beginning toward making the effort commensurate 
with the emergency. 

It required no long discussion, no turning over 
of long lists of names, to decide on a candidate for 
this unique role. The roster of wealthy men was, 
to be sure, considerable, and the proportion of them 
who had established a record for magnificent sup- 
port in charitable causes was above the common 



SLOW PROGRESS 63 

ratio. For all that, the latitude of probabilities 
was narrowly limited. For so unconventional a 
part it required a mind gifted with more imagina- 
tion than customarily fell to the share of million- 
aires. The man would have to think about phi- 
lanthropy in the same large terms as he was wont 
to deal in in his business. And such as he— if they 
grew anywhere — were most likely to thrive and 
develop in that spacious region which is, of all 
parts of the country, the most characteristic — the 
Central West — where America is still youthful and 
brimful of her early aspirations and enthusiasm. 
In the East demands upon the generous were con- 
stant, multitudinous and exacting. The West was 
still young and self-reliant enough to leave the 
charitably disposed without too burdensome a field 
for their impulses in their own communities. But 
for purposes of benevolence the Central West meant 
Chicago, and Chicago meant but one man. That 
man was Julius Rosenwald. Both by quality of 
imagination and susceptibility to the appeal of mis- 
fortune, the record of the man left him solitary in 
the field. 

Remembering his splendid work at the great Car- 
negie Hall meeting of two years before, it was 
suggested that Dr. J. L. Magnes should carry the 
message to Garcia. The committee regarded him 
as the master worker in stirring the mind and the 



64 THEJEWPAYS 

emotions. No one had any inkling at the moment 
that an intimate and gentle agent had already been 
at work to prepare Mr. Rosenwald for the part just 
assigned him. At any rate, Mr. Magnes begged 
exemption on the plea that he was unequal to the 
undertaking. He nominated in his stead Mr. Billi- 
kopf, the newly arrived director. Mr. Billikopf, 
an old friend of Mr. Rosenwald's, reluctantly and 
with misgiving accepted the task. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE PHILANTHROPY OF THE MASSES 

AT this point I must pause to narrate the 
origins of the third and last of the Com- 
mittees. If the American and Central Committees 
were dramatic in their origin and career, the rise 
a year after the outbreak of the war of a third 
organization in the field, was hardly short of 
spectacular. The elements constituting the former 
organization were the traditional mainstays of char- 
ity. The membership of the latter were, if not giv- 
ers of long standing, at least firm believers in the 
theory of benevolence. The seventy-five people on 
the other hand who congregated on the east-side 
one day in August, 1915, to institute the People's 
Relief Committee were the very leaders and f ormu- 
lators of the doctrine that all philanthropy is an 
irrelevance and an impertinence. Surely there was 
something striking and characteristic of the times 
that labor union officials, former socialist candi- 
dates, and radicals and semi-radicals of every stripe 
and shade should be themselves instrumental in the 
formation of a charitable society. In ordinary 

65 



66 THEJEWPAYS 

times these men had more than once led assaults 
upon the institutions of benevolence in their midst 
and had even gone so far as to discredit the motives 
of their supporters. All philanthropy, they had 
preached, was a screen devised by capitalists to 
mask their depredations and to salve their con- 
sciences. It was an instrument for misguiding the 
poor by blinding them to the causes of their pov- 
erty and inspiring them with a sense of gratitude 
toward their despoilers. It was a wedge in the 
solidarity of the proletariat designed to retard the 
triumph of the fullest democracy. 

But these were not ordinary times. Therefore, 
contrary to the common belief that radicals are 
sticklers for theory, these leaders of labor faced 
reality with practical sense. Millions of women and 
children were perishing from hunger and exposure. 
Whoever might be at fault; whatever the sinister 
forces might be that were responsible for this vast 
misery, the first thought for sane men must be to 
devise methods for ameliorating it. Doctrinally, 
indeed, every attempt at relief might be a way of 
playing into the hands of the war-makers. But 
this was no time for doctrine. This was hardly 
in the category of usual benevolence. While whole 
peoples were being starved and tormented one 
could not sit back philosophically and wait for the 
victims to trace the origin of their sorrows in the 



THE MASSES 67 

hope that they might swell the ranks of the dis- 
contented with the present order of things. The 
immediate concern was inevitably to lighten as far 
as one could the burden of the sufferers; and for 
men with open eyes the immediate concern ex- 
cluded for the time every other thought. 

Nevertheless a residue of the old distrust re- 
mained. The class-conscious working man could 
not even in these times be got effectively to join 
hands with banker and bourgeois in the promotion 
of a cause which he felt to be principally his own. 
The existing commmittees representing the inde- 
pendent classes had on their part given scant at- 
tention since their organization to the possible con- 
tributions of the labor masses ; while the worker, on 
the other hand, found it difficult to respond as gen- 
erously as he felt to appeals emanating from 
sources not representative of his class. It be- 
came evident that if the contributions (insignificant 
individually but enormous in the aggregate) of this 
element were not to be lost, a committee of their 
own ranks was urgently needed. Such a group 
would be in the closest contact with the rank and 
file in the factory and in their homes ; it would know 
their minds and their means and would have their 
confidence and their hearty cooperation. Such a 
committee could not only add very considerable 
sums to the common treasury but, like its sister 



68 THE JEW PAYS 

organizations, it was bound to have immeasurable 
influence in developing a spirit of responsibility 
among the masses of Jewry which would be of in- 
calculable value in the future. 

From the purely democratic point of view this 
new organization is in my estimation by far the 
most interesting that has come out of the European 
war in this country. A mere glance at the names 
of the men and women who sit on its directorate 
leaves no doubt of its thoroughly representative 
character. The Central and the American Com- 
mittees are largely self -constituted. They are rep- 
resentative, to be sure, in the sense of general 
leadership and influence. The People's Relief 
Committee is a sanhedrin of the elected spokes- 
men of the great mass of laboring Jews in the 
United States. All the great industries in which 
Jewish workmen are engaged, all the distinctive 
social and political and educational bodies of Jew- 
ish workmen, have contributed to its membership. 
There is scarcely a significant figure identified with 
labor or the political-economic movements which 
supplement labor, but has its representative on the 
Committee. There is a liberal air about the entire 
conduct of the organization — its method of appeal, 
its machinery of collection and the very atmosphere 
of its office — which renders it unique among be- 
nevolent societies. 



THE MASSES 69 

It has not been as simple a matter as it may seem 
to draw the line always between the constituencies 
of this new organization and the Central Relief 
Committee. Broadly speaking, the one represents 
the intellectually emancipated mass while the other 
finds its support among the adherents of the old 
faith; one may be said to be the spokesman of 
the younger generation and the other of their con- 
servative elders. But in another sense the line of 
demarkation follows the classification of labor and 
the so-called non-productive classes. The conse- 
quence is that boundaries are often impossible to 
draw. Station in life does not invariably go hand 
in hand with a class attitude in politics. Not all 
workers shun the synagogue and vote the Socialist 
ticket. There are doubtless thousands of humble 
factory hands who are spiritually of the same 
temper as their employers but who by the sheer 
circumstance of occupation put their monthly dol- 
lar into the treasury of the People's Relief Com- 
mittee. Thus it happens, for instance, that an or- 
ganization made up in the main of men remote 
from the ancient faith and its practices, finds it 
politic to keep its doors closed on the Sabbath. 

The manager of the Committee's office relates 
the following incident which, aside from its fine 
pathos, illustrates how confusingly class and sect 
lines criss-cross each other in the ghetto: 



70 THEJEWPAYS 

"On Saturdays and holidays, though the office is 
closed, I frequently come in to read the mail. I 
have to do that because some of the most urgent 
matters often present themselves on such days. 
Not long ago I was at my desk on a Saturday morn- 
ing when two men, taking advantage of my negli- 
gence to lock the door, walked in. The more eld- 
erly of the two promptly began to abuse me for 
being at work on the day of rest. I kept telling 
him that the office was not really open for its usual 
business; but to no purpose. Then it occurred to 
me to remind my critic that the very Talmud itself 
made exceptions in the observance of the Sabbath 
in the case of physicians and all emergencies where 
life and health are involved. 'Our people,' I said, 
'are starving and suffering by the thousands in 
Europe, and even if I were working here on their 
behalf on this day, as I do. on all others, I should 
hardly be transgressing.' This avenue of attack 
seemed to prove effective. Whereupon I pro- 
ceeded to read my visitors the cable message which 
had just arrived from one of our commissioners 
abroad: 'The famished had been keeping their 
bodies and souls together upon a diet of rats and 
mice. The result was that the price of even this 
article of food rose to impossible heights. In 
Riga people are paying as much as four roubles for 
a rat, and now the supply is vanishing. The rats 



THE MiiSSES 71 

and mice are all cleaned out. Prominent men and 
women, one time the wealthiest in the city, may be 
daily seen rummaging in garbage stations for 
scraps of bone to make soup for their children.' 
I had barely finished reading when I observed that 
my visitors were in tears. After a moment the old 
man who had complained of my breach of the 
Sabbath began nervously to search his pockets. 
Then in a despairing and broken voice he turned to 
me: 'I have now been on strike for ten weeks, so 
I haven't any money. But can you make any use 
of this overcoat?' He began to take it off. 'It 
isn't much, but it's the best I've got and I can do 
without it. Oh, if I only could go there myself to 
throw it upon one of the living corpses over there! 
Please forgive me for my bigotry. Tliere's no 
nobler work in the eyes of Heaven than this. Sick 
men may eat even on Yom Kippur; so why should 
I question the righteousness of your doing for oth- 
ers what you would have to be doing for me if I 
hadn't been lucky enough to be here?' He left 
his overcoat on my desk and I heard him sobbing 
as he disappeared." 

As far as New York and other great industrial 
towns are concerned the People's Relief Commit- 
tee works largely and very effectively through the 
trade unions and the social organizations of labor. 
Workingmen, it has been found, respond with 



72 THE JEW PAYS 

greater readiness to appeals when they are made 
to them by their own elected and trusted leaders. 
The actual collecting is carried on in a variety of 
ways. In the majority of instances the worker 
pledges himself to donate a set amount weekly or 
annually. Often, as in the past two years, the 
men and women of the factories have volunteered 
to work on certain holidays and to devote the entire 
proceeds of their toil to the cause. Now and then 
in the course of campaigns collections are made 
directly in the shops. A very considerable por- 
tion of the contributions of this Committee have 
come from immensely successful bazaars and pub- 
lic entertainments — traditional methods which are 
dear to the hearts of the rank and file. The first 
of the bazaars, for instance, netted close to one-half 
million dollars and generated more enthusiasm 
among the Yiddish speaking masses than any de- 
vice that has been tried since. In December, 1915, 
a day was set aside by the People's Relief Com- 
mittee for street solicitations. The occasion was 
made notable by the enthusiasm and devotion of 
the large number of young men and young women 
who had been assigned to posts in the city of New 
York. It was an atrociously dreary day. From 
early dawn the skies were overcast and leaden and 
th« air was damp and penetrating. Soon after the 
solicitors had arrived at their places the rain be- 



THE MASSES 73 

gan to come down in buckets. Following a hurried 
consultation in the office an order was issued to 
call in the volunteers. But these young men and 
women were a determined lot. They had been de- 
tailed to a post of urgent duty and they had no 
intention to be swerved from accomplishing their 
task by such trifles as evil weather. They unan- 
imously met the request to disband with a resolute 
declaration that they were there to stick. They did 
stick. And at the end of the day they had the 
satisfaction of turning some fifty thousand dollars 
of hard cash into the coff'ers of the People's Relief 
Committee. 

But the People's Relief Committee extends its 
activities far beyond the industrial cities of the 
Eastern seaboard. Its branches and sub-committees 
operate in communities numbering no less than one 
hundred and fifteen municipalities scattered over 
three-quarters of the states of the Union. In these 
distant localities it is customary for the workmen's 
committee to work hand in hand with the local 
representatives of the Central and the American 
bodies. But everywhere their identity remains 
separate and distinguishes itself by its constituency, 
by its methods and by its fine spirit of generous 
helpfulness. It is a safe surmise that proportion- 
ately to income no element of Jewry in this country 
does its duty by the sufferers aboard more com- 



74 THEJEWPAYS 

pletely and at a cost of a more genuine sacrifice 
than they. This is the first time in history that the 
Jewish labor masses have had an opportunity to 
give substantial evidence of the love that is in them 
for their fellows. They have responded to their 
opportunity with a nobility and an open-handedness 
which is incomprehensible and which cannot be for- 
gotten. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE DRAMATIC BEGINNING 

TO return to the main currents, the account of 
Mr. Billikopf's trip to Washington in search 
of Mr. Rosenwald to deliver his bold message may 
be best narrated in Mr. Billikopf's own words : 

You may judge of the humor in which I set out 
on my mission if you will remember that I had 
seen Mr. Rosenwald only a few days before in 
Chicago on my way to New York. We have been 
friends for many years and I had, as usually, paid 
a visit to his home. He knew of course of the 
call I had received from the American Jewish Re- 
lief Committee. He was not very optimistic about 
it. I believe he had a moderately good opinion of 
my ability — in fact a much better one than I could 
live up to. But he could not, he insisted, conceive 
of me in my new post. "What," he kept reiterat- 
ing, "have you got to do with fund-collecting? 
You are a social worker. You are even, if you 
like, a diplomat, a statesman. But money raising 
is a profession in itself and you do not belong in 
it." He shrugged his shoulders doubtfully and 
added: "Still, the people in New York have 
chosen you and you are on your way, so here's my 

blessing. But I would not have advised calling 

75 



76 THE JEW PAYS 

you if I had been taken into their counsels." And 
here I was on my way to try the abilities which he 
thought were not in me, on him for a starter. I 
was not over-sanguine. 

To add to my depression it was a wild night. 
The rain and sleet were beating mournfully against 
the window of my berth. The train was packed 
with a vociferous throng of ward heelers and 
office seekers in factitious holiday mood. It was 
the night of the 3rd of March. On the morrow 
President Wilson was to be reinaugurated. And 
the gay scene with its laughter, its imitation good 
fellowship and its heavy clouds of tobacco smoke 
was almost insupportable. If only my quarry had 
been in his customary haunts so that the familiar 
scene might restore my ease and composure! 
But he too was at the seat of Government. It 
would be a crowded day for him. I had grave 
questionings in my heart as to whether I could even 
catch a glimpse of him. Affairs in New York 
were so situated that I must return by the midnight 
train on the day following. Mr. Rosenwald was 
not only one of the busiest members of the Council 
of National Defense, he was personally somewhat 
close to the President, and to-morrow was a great 
day in official Washington. Heaven alone knew 
whether, for all his usual generous leanings, he 
would be in a mood to listen to my horror-monger- 
ing anent the Jews of Eastern Europe. 

But the fate of six millions of people in the 
shambles of the Eastern war-zone depended on the 
success of my mission. My first campaign was 



THE BEGINNING 77 

doomed in advance unless I brought back what I 
had been sent for. There was no other way. Mr. 
Rosenwald was the only reliance of the Committee. 
If I allowed my discouragement to affect me and 
he failed us, all our plans would be headed for the 
rocks. All through the night I kept rehearsing the 
speech I was to make to him. I doubt whether I 
closed an eye all the way from New York to Wash- 
ington. I sketched a most gloomy picture of the 
state of things abroad, drawing largely on my over- 
wrought imagination and on a printed copy of Dr. 
Magnes's Carnegie Hall address. And I lay in bed 
repeating it silently until I knew it by rote and was 
almost in tears over its tragic details myself. As 
my train pulled into the Union Station I was 
crowding the porter off the car steps and I was the 
first to issue upon the street. 

Arriving at the Willard Hotel I made for the 
Rosenwald suite. I was received with the usual 
cordial hospitality. I was asked to join the family 
at breakfast, but this was no occasion for broaching 
my project. There were one or two other guests 
with us at the table. I did however, manage to 
convey to my host that I had something of im- 
portance to talk about to him and he assured me 
that he would make time for the purpose late in 
the evening. The major part of the time during 
the meal was given over to small talk about the 
forthcoming celebration. Mr. Rosenwald insisted 
on getting me tickets for the inaugural celebration. 
I saw him again when he returned to dress for an 
official dinner, only for a moment. 



78 THE JEW PAYS 

For the remainder of the day I was left with 
nothing to do but to contemplate the trying business 
that was ahead of me. A friend in whom I con- 
fided the object of my visit succeeded in reducing 
still further the little self-possession that was left 
me. He thought the whole mission absurd and 
fantastic. Happily I had the good judgment later 
in the day to take Mrs. Rosenwald into my con- 
fidence. She listened to my recital with a quizzi- 
cal smile, never interrupting me, and when I had 
finished she said quietly: "It is, I confess, a 
rather ambitious mission you are on; I suspect 
Mr. Rosenwald will throw you out of the window 
when you broach it to him." Involuntarily I 
glanced down on the pavement below. "It is not 
very serious," I said with a forced smile. "It won't 
be so much of a fall." We talked about other 
things, or rather I should say Mrs. Rosenwald did. 
She took considerable delight in mocking my brood- 
ing seriousness; all of which was exceedingly for- 
tunate for me, or the suspense and uncertainty 
might have unnerved me altogether. Her excellent 
good humor and kindliness and her efficient manner 
of keeping my mind off my preoccupations saved 
the day. 

I joined the family again at dinner — the family, 
that is to say, without the parents. Then the little 
party disbanded and for the remainder of the even- 
ing I had my task cut out for me in pacing the 
lobbies of the Willard Hotel. 

It was getting late and I dared not leave my 
post lest he should appear while I was gone and 



THE BEGINNING 79 

retire to his suite before I returned. For the first 
time in my career I had a taste of a detective's life 
and I found it unsavory. Whether or not I was to 
succeed as a moneygatherer the future might tell, 
but for the moment I learned that man-hunting was 
distinctly out of my sphere. And in the meantime 
the hour for the last train to New York was drawing 
nearer and nearer, and far from having achieved 
the object of my expedition I had not as much as 
met the enemy. 

At 11 o'clock, however, Mr. Julius Rosenwald 
appeared in the company of two senators. He 
stopped at the hotel desk to ask for his mail and, 
never hesitating an instant, I approached and 
touched his shoulder. He hailed me cordially and 
unsuspectingly. With his arm around me he led 
me to where the gentlemen of the Senate were wait- 
ing for him and proceeded to introduce me and 
to tell them my life history. One of the legislators 
was from my own State of Missouri; and being a 
friendly and talkative person, he fell into rem- 
iniscence. Did I know this one or that one? 
Did I recall the last political battle between the 
forces of light and the powers of darkness in Kan- 
sas City? How was Old So-and-So getting on? 
Did I say I had been instrumental in floating that 
magnificent organization called the Board of Public 
Welfare? Well, that was a noble piece of work! 
And all this while I was rehearsing anew what I 
was about to say to the man I had been shadowing 
an entire day, assuming that I could get him alone 
before train time. I squeezed Mr. Rosenwald's 



80 THE JEW PAYS 

arm significantly and whispered in his ear that 
I had something of importance to convey to him. 
He studied me calmly. "Is it very, very im- 
portant?" he asked lightly, and before I could give 
him my emphatic reply he bade our friends good- 
night and drew me off to a sofa in a corner of the 
lobby. 

"Well, tell me all about it," he said as soon as 
we had sat down. I glanced up at him and my 
entire harangue on which I had spent so much ar- 
duous toil and thought evaporated. I heard my- 
self, to my own great surprise, telling him in the 
very simplest and most unadorned style that a cam- 
paign for ten million dollars was about to be 
launched, that it needed some powerful dramatic 
stimulus to start it off effectively and to end it suc- 
cessfully; that a committee had determined that 
nothing but a great single gift would serve and that 
he alone could make that gift. I dwelt hardly at 
all on the state of things abroad, merely indicating 
in a matter of fact way what he was well aware of, 
that the condition of the European Jews was grow- 
ing increasingly worse, and that therefore a re- 
newed effort on a much greater scale than had ever 
been tried must be initiated. He listened to me 
without comment while my appeal was gathering 
momentum and climbing logically from argument 
to argument to a climax. I had had hundreds of 
conversations with Mr. Rosenwald but I had never 
before asked him for contributions of any sort, and 
never before had I seen a face so transparent and 



THE BEGINNING 81 

serene and yet so profoundly thoughtful. I kept 
praying, as I talked along, that he might not break 
in. We seemed both under the spell of a common 
great purpose, and I knew that as long as the spell 
was not broken the future of the undertaking was 
assured. As I concluded with my specific request 
for a round million the earnestness of his expres- 
sion deepened. He said, "Do you think it will do 
any good?" I nodded and was about to make a 
highly colored forecast of the results of such a 
contribution, when he added : "Very well, I will do 
it. You may go back to New York and tell them 
that I'll do it." 

No one who has known Julius Rosenwald will 
find any cause for surprise in the manner in which 
he acceded to my suggestion. It was thoroughly in 
keeping with the modesty, the vision and the utter 
selflessness of the man. I have a very vivid pic- 
ture in my mind to this moment of the complete 
absence in his manner and mien of any thought of 
vain reward. His quick, unhesitating response had 
in it all the elements of an instinctive reaction. 
But his reward came nevertheless in the great in- 
centive that he gave to his fellows throughout the 
country to follow his example; and that, for him 
as for any genuinely generous heart, was reward 
enough. Not alone the American Jewish Commit- 
tee but the country as a whole was soon to feel 
the impetus of his unparalleled act. The President 
of the United States at once estimated its impor- 
tance and telegraphed to him in these words: 



82 THE JEW PAYS 

The White House, Washington, D. C, Mar. 28, 
Julius Rosenwald, Chicago, 111. 

Your contribution of one million dollars to the Ten 
Million Dollar Fund for the Relief of Jewish War Suf- 
ferers serves democracy as well as humanity. The Rus- 
sian Revolution has opened the door of freedom to an 
oppressed people but unless they are given life and 
strength and courage the opportunity of centuries will 
avail them little. It is to America that these starving 
millions look for aid and out of our prosperity fruit 
of free institutions should spring a vast and ennobling 
generosity. Your gift lays an obligation even while 
it furnishes inspiration. 

WOODROW WILSON. 

And the President of the American Jewish Relief 
Committee sent his acknowledgment and appreci- 
ation in a letter which, as a brilliant sum-up of the 
task of American Jewry and as a forecast of the 
good effects of Mr. Rosenwald's action, if for no 
other reason, should be made a part of this record : 

My dear Mr. Rosenwald: 

I take great pleasure in extending to you, personally 
and on behalf of the Committee, most cordial thanks for 
your great goodness and generosity. Your impressive 
action cannot fail to be a source of inspiration to every 
right-thinking man and will undoubtedly call into ac- 
tivity the latent energies of our co-religionists and arouse 
them to a realizing sense of their obligation to their 
suffering brethren in belligerent lands. We have needed 
just such an incentive as that which you now, with char- 



THE BEGINNING 83 

acteristic insight and modesty, have imparted to us. 
There is nothing as contagious as a good example, and I 
am confident that your initiative will induce hundreds 
who have heretofore been indifferent, because of a failure 
to recognize the crying need which exists, to give liber- 
ally to the cause, which should enlist the sympathy and 
charity of every man and woman who has the slightest 
regard for the good name of Judaism. 

Your offer was the first real ray of sunshine that has 
come to us in these dark days. It seems, however, to 
have been the precursor of that glorious hope which after 
so many years of anxious and prayerful waiting has at 
last dawned upon the inhabitants of Russia, and which 
I firmly believe will prove a harbinger of universal lib- 
erty and in large part lead to the solution of the many 
serious problems which have in the past confronted 
the Jewry of the world. 

Be assured that we shall do all that lies in our power 
to earn the million dollars which you are prepared to 
give so unreservedly, and be further assured that the 
consciousness of your devotion to suffering humanity 
and to our own people, who have borne with so much 
patience the unspeakable hardships which have befallen 
them, will be an earnest of the undying friendship of 
your associates and of those in whose hearts abides the 
love of humanity. 

I am, with sincere regards 

Yours faithfully, 

LOUIS MARSHALL. 

to which Mr. Rosenwald replied: 



84 THE JEW PAYS 

Hon. Julius Rosenwald, 
Chicago, Illinois. 

March 9, 1917. 
Mr. Louis Marshall, Chairman, 
American Jewish Relief Committee, 
Dear Mr. Marshall: 

The marked change for the worse which has taken 
place in the condition of our co-religionists in belligerent 
lands, so graphically outlined by Mr. Jacob Billikopf, 
has impressed upon me most acutely the great need of 
raising immediately the fund which the American Jewish 
Relief Committee is endeavoring to collect. 

In the hope that the urgency of the situation will be 
brought home to the Jews of the United States, I make 
the following offer: 

I will donate to the fund of the American Jewish 

Relief Committee an amount not to exceed one million 

dollars conditioned as follows: 

For every million dollars collected after March 1st, 

I will contribute $100,000 but, in order that results 

may be obtained with sufficient rapidity at least in 

some small measure to meet the present crying needs, 

I put a time limitation — until November 1, 1917 — 

upon this offer. 

I regret that conditions will not permit my joining 
with you and your Committee actively in the raising of 
these funds, sincerely believing that no greater crisis in 
the history of the world has ever existed, where literally 
millions of people are on the verge of starvation. 

Trusting that the total amount of ten million dollars 
will soon be collected and wishing you Godspeed on your 
noble errand, I am 

Sincerely yours, 

JULIUS ROSENWALD. 



CHAPTER IX 

THE CONQUEST OF THE COUNTRY 

THE effect of the great contribution was enor- 
mously more profound than had been ex- 
pected even by those who had inspired it. It was 
as immediate as it was widespread. That it gen- 
erated a new and increased energy in the American 
Relief Committee goes without saying. That much 
at least had been foreseen. The newly devised ma- 
chinery depended exclusively upon this impulse for 
its effectiveness. The additional stimulus, wisely 
provided by the conditions of the donation, served 
an excellent purpose. The great campaign of 1917 
opened with a fanfare. A powerful impetus had 
been injected into the hitherto pedestrian affairs of 
the organization, and its new leadership saw to it 
that none of its fruits should grow unharvested. 
The new director, taking his cue from his initial 
achievement, proceeded to organize the entire coun- 
try upon a scale and with an intensity undreamt of 
in the past. He had inherited the germ idea of 
State committees. He set about devoting the en- 
tire preliminary period of the campaign to a prac- 
tical elaboration and extension of it. It is difficult, 

85 



86 THE JEW PAYS 

owing to the vagueness of the records, to make even 
reasonably certain as to where the credit for specific 
schemes of organization belongs. But it is safe, I 
believe, to assert that it was Mr. Billikopf's skill in 
organization that was responsible for the highly ef- 
fective State committees, as the expression is now 
understood. 

In the past three years, the State committee had 
been scarcely more than an aspiration. Virtually 
all the moneys that had been collected had come 
from the metropolitan cities and now and then from 
the larger towns of the country. Scores of counties 
in every State had not been as much as touched. 
It requires time and toil of the most intensive sort 
to fine-comb an entire State, especially in the less 
populated regions. And the earlier organization 
had had its hands more than full in compassing the 
mobilization of the larger centers. Indeed, this 
preliminary work with the cities provided the back- 
bone and nucleus for the lining-up of the entire 
country. State organization would have been al- 
most unfeasible without these bases. Mr. Billi- 
kopf and his staif, vividly aware of the value of 
the legacy that had come to them from their pre- 
decessors, made the most thorough-going use of 
their agencies in cities like Chicago, Atlanta, New 
Orleans and San Francisco. By way of economiz- 
ing their resources, they enlisted the aid of city 



THE CONQUEST 87 

chairmen everywhere in their efiforts to extend the 
organization into their respective States. It was a 
happy device which the new directorate was to use 
repeatedly and with great effect in the future, and 
it marked the initial recognition of the important 
psychological fact that the indifferent outsider of 
yesterday, having once been recruited, may read- 
ily be turned into an agent for the conversion of 
those who still remain outside. Every man who 
was now asked to undertake the organization of his 
particular State had perhaps no more than a month 
before offered vigorous resistance to the effort of 
the Committee to associate him with the work at 
all. Now, however, he was a part of the establish- 
ment, and with the customary human pride of or- 
ganization, he was ready to go far beyond the lim- 
its of his original intentions in rendering the work 
as successful as might be. 

The net result of this twofold endeavor — the re- 
newed vitality at headquarters and the multipli- 
cation of the directorate in forty-eight separate cen- 
ters—was that within very few months a network 
of intensely vigorous subsidiaries stretching from 
coast to coast had been effected. For the first time 
since the outbreak of the war, a complete mo- 
bilization of the country had been brought about, 
so that from now on collecting campaigns could be 
launched and successfully conducted from head- 



88 THEJEWPAYS 

quarters accessibly located and manned by people 
who were both familiar with the financial and 
psychological conditions of their sphere and who 
were themselves influential and well-known to their 
constituencies. In the majority of instances, the 
erstwhile chairman of the leading city was trans- 
formed into the State chairman, and he in turn was 
invited to get into touch with prominent men in 
well-chosen towns and counties throughout his 
State as a preliminary to the establishment of local 
committees. The national office, it goes without 
saying, cooperated intensively. A method had 
been devised whereby the State chairman could 
be aided in the choice of his lieutenants by sup- 
plying him with preliminary data as to the financial 
qualifications of candidates. The State chairman 
himself could be well relied on to supplement the 
information conveyed to him from New York, but 
it was of the utmost service to him to be presented 
with a small selection of names from which he 
might make his ultimate choice. The central 
office continually consulted the lists provided by 
the financial agencies in determining the standing 
in the community of a prospective local repre- 
sentative. Dun's and Bradstreet's provided the 
fundamental basis of selection. The State com- 
mittee, starting from that point, determined the 



THE CONQUEST 89 

rest of the necessary qualifications of candidates. 
But it was not solely upon the Jewish relief or- 
ganizations that the Rosenwald contribution reacted 
with such splendid effect. A new pace and 
standard had been set for benevolence generally, 
and men and women of means and generous im- 
pulses were moved to think upon the problems of 
both war and internal philanthropy in new and 
larger terms. To be sure, there had been in the 
past vast contributions of a semi-philanthropic 
character, directed toward the endowment of 
specific institutions. There had been for many 
years in existence in America great foundations 
which dealt in figures exceeding the Rosenwald 
gift. Yet all such funds had been contributed 
toward the advancement of what are called con- 
structive projects. Clinics and universities, mis- 
sionary bodies and establishments for the promo- 
tion of universal peace and their like, had been 
the exclusive beneficiaries of these staggering for- 
tunes. Never before, however, had any mere 
charity devoted to temporary and palliative relief 
been known to scale such heights. The war had 
served to familiarize people with huge expendi- 
tures. But previous to March, 1917, a hundred 
thousand dollars had been regarded as the startling 
finality, even in war-giving. Such donations had 



90 THE JEW PAYS 

themselves been of sufficient rarity and they there- 
fore never failed to elicit the wonderment and com- 
mendation of an entire continent. 

Now, at one amazing leap, a revolutionary de- 
parture had taken place. A page in the history 
of philanthropy had been turned and a new epoch 
begun. A reclassification of worth was imminent. 
The givers in six digits found themselves overnight 
removed from the pinnacle of human generosity 
and relegated to second place. Henceforth, none 
but men and women who could think in terms 
large enough to actually meet the demands of a 
changed order, could hope to rank among the first 
line of world-philanthropists. 

The impact was felt throughout the country by 
every variety of relief agency. Before the cam- 
paign of that year had been completed the United 
States had entered the war and the numerous war 
work associations which had arisen to cooperate 
with the Government became the inheritors as it 
were of Mr. Rosenwald's imaginative act. A 
spirit of generous rivalry and emulation had been 
created. Scores of men and women in the front 
ranks of these philanthropies took note of the 
altered atmosphere and opened their treasuries in 
accordance with the new standard set for them. 
It was not merely a feeling that they could not 
afford to be outdone; they had simply been orien- 



THE CONQUEST 91 

tated anew. They were seeing their tasks and their 
responsibilities in a fresh light. The angle of ap- 
proach to war philanthropy had been widened; the 
point of view had been shifted to rarer elevations. 

The permanent peace-time social institutions 
likewise came in for their share. It was inevitable 
but that the revised philosophy of philanthropy 
should affect the pace and tone of general benev- 
olence. Hospitals, orphanages and sanitariums of 
all sorts which in times past had had a struggle to 
raise trifling sums for their maintenance found 
themselves in a position where huge endowments 
exceeding the best dreams of their directors could 
be secured almost overnight and with a minimum 
of effort. The sympathetic ducts of the nation had 
been touched and set flowing with a liberality and 
regularity unknown before. Men and women — 
and generous ones — who had hitherto been accus- 
tomed to annual pittances in the interest of a news- 
boys' club or the like, began to be stirred by a new 
conscience and found themselves irritated by an 
uncomfortable sense of having been unforgivably 
slack. 

The dramatic value of the Rosenwald contribu- 
tion was turned to account in a manner so simple 
as to suggest the attributes of genius. It will be 
remembered that the donation had been promised 
on condition that an aggregate amount equal to 



92 THE JEW PAYS 

nine times its own size should be raised in the 
rest of the country. In other words, Mr. Rosen- 
wald's share of the campaign receipts was to be 
ten per cent of the total, providing the total was 
not over ten millions. Taking this circumstance 
into consideration the directorate proceeded to 
canvass the country for other donors who might 
be prepared to play the same role in their own state 
or community as the Chicago merchant had agreed 
to play with respect to the country as a whole. The 
device worked magically. Everywhere in the 
United States "Local Rosenwalds" sprang up 
offering to contribute one-tenth of the aggregate 
contribution of their city, state or section. This 
development was beyond doubt the most fruitful 
of all consequences of the Rosenwald-Billikopf con- 
spiracy as far as the immediate advancement of 
the relief cause was concerned. Without it, it is 
gravely to be questioned whether the most gripping 
relief project ever undertaken by Jews in America 
could have been carried to success. It was in a 
performance cranuned full of fancy-stirring inci- 
dents, far and away the most impressive. 



CHAPTER X 

THE CONDUCT OF A CAMPAIGN 
AN EXTERIOR VIEW 

HAD it not been for the circumstance that the 
amazing spectacle of fortune-gathering as 
it has been perfected in the past two years occurred 
in the midst of the electric atmosphere of a world 
at war, I hav^ no doubt but that it would have been 
noted as one of the most startling and stupendous 
exhibitions of organized popular effort. The 
modem world has made some very notable ad- 
vances on antiquity in the matter of large-scale 
public performance. It has inherited and re- 
adapted the ancient circus, the arena and the open 
air amphitheater and it has gone many an im- 
pressive step beyond this meager legacy. It has 
invented and carried to a high degree of perfec- 
tion the international exposition; it has projected 
and carried into the domain of reality the national 
park and the national playground — things that 
sprawl over territories immense enough to comprise 
an old-time empire, and draw multitudes undreamt 
of by ancient monarchs. Most curious of all, it 
has devised and developed that most fantastic of 



94 THE JEW PAYS 

spectacles of modern times, the national political 
campaign. 

But in all seriousness there is nothing in any of 
these that can even remotely rival the fund col- 
lecting campaign as it has been developed in the 
recent past. For sheer diversity of mechanism, 
for the vistas it opens up into the exuberance of 
human ingenuity, for the scope and depth of its 
bewildering appeal to the senses and the emotions, 
for its startling utilization of the findings of the 
new science of psychology, and for its purely 
spectacular quality it is an entirely unique institu- 
tion. 

Consider the scene. Weeks before the opening 
of the first guns there commences, and impercepti- 
bly develops, an intense barrage of carefully se- 
lected news, feature articles and pictorial material. 
The reading public which had all its adult life man- 
aged to plod on in felicitious ignorance of the very 
existence of Walloons in Belgium or Uhro-Rusins 
in Ukrainia or Jews in Lithuania is startled out of 
its indifferent stupor with a skillfully graded 
series of dramatized lessons in the history, ethnic 
antecedents, present economic status and racial 
aspirations of these somewhat vague, highly pic- 
turesque and heroic peoples. The purely educa- 
tional content of this gratuitous information is, 
modestly speaking, enormous. The Mentor Asso- 



A CAMPAIGN 95 

elation is by the side of this a mere tyro. You 
suddenly realize how your education has been 
falsified and skimped. Glancing down the broad 
avenues of culture that stretch majestically before 
you, you become a prey to regret and resent the 
consummate frauds who called themselves your 
teachers at school and college. What do they 
know of art and archaeology, of literature and 
geography, of history and anthropology? Why, 
here are whole races — to judge by the accounts, the 
very foremost members of the human family — -with 
records in warfare, in the art of self-government, 
in the skill for divine song, whose very existence 
had never even been mentioned to you throughout 
your long arduous career at college. Of course 
your heart is set vibrating with an uncanny sym- 
pathy for these neglected portions of the race; 
partly, no doubt, out of sense of kinship bom of 
the realization that you have yourself been care- 
lessly passed over when the intelligence about 
them was being generally imparted. An irresistible 
yearning comes over you. You see these brave, 
stalwart races. You extend your fraternal hand 
to them to share with them their noble lives and 
worship communally with them at their sacred 
shrines. 

And then — it is curious how many interesting 
things happen in the places and to the people we 



96 THE JEW PAYS 

have lately read about! Before you have had 
time to grasp the trend of your own tender emotions 
the tragic news is flashed across half the world to 
you, that these very recent friends and brothers of 
yours are in a most serious situation. Their 
venerable old men, their plucky, beautiful women, 
their tender, wide-eyed children are being starved, 
exiled and massacred by an unspeakable and cruel 
enemy. Things look as black as night. You, and 
you alone are the only prop in their adversity. 
Irrelevantly the reports of these regrettable inci- 
dents conclude with a query to you. Will you 
help? Of course you will. The mere question is 
a slight to your generosity. 

This neat bit of propaganda is, as I say, but a 
curtain raiser; the actual performance has as yet 
scarcely begun. But the suspense is of brief dura- 
tion. Things begin to move jauntily. Telegrams 
sail across the wires "not single spy but in 
battalions." Noted visitors make their appearance 
in the city — ^visitors curiously enough who have 
been public figures in American life for a genera- 
tion, but who it is suddenly revealed are themselves 
scions of the gallant unhappy peoples in question. 
The accustomed tenor of the community's life is 
quickened and galvanized. The "social" — an in- 
stitution normally associated with the efi^ete centers 
— buds forth, blossoms and multiplies in tropical 



A CAMPAIGN 97 

luxuriance. Formal luncheons and still more 
formal dinner parties crowd the calendar. Public 
halls are rented and given over to nightly per- 
formances of undreamt magnificence. There is 
eloquence and histrionic talent, bazaars riotous in 
their oriental profusion of color abound; and all of 
this in the same persistent touching key. 

The streets are lined with posters in endless 
variety of phrase, color and size. Nor are the 
public conveyances exempt. Mercantile interests 
are forgotten, the spaces traditionally preempted 
by familiar commercial announcements are sud- 
denly and universally superseded by the pressing 
appeals of the distant sufferers from the war. The 
business houses of the town have with one accord 
turned over their plants and their high-salaried ad- 
vertising experts to the service of the great cause; 
and these latter with their well-known skill por- 
tray, with pens and brushes dipped in the tears and 
sorrows of the victims, each pathetic detail of their 
misery. Only as an afterthought and in the most 
inconspicuous manner is it divulged that these 
spaces in railway and newspaper are "contributed 
by the First National Bank," or by the Universal 
Sweets Corporation. 

The ancient easy relationships of the com- 
munity have been set awry. At first glance it 
looks indeed simple enough. One hears a lot, to 



98 THE JEW PAYS 

be sure, of a committee which is in charge of all 
these amazing operations; and the appeals and 
exultations are addressed presumably to the public. 
In practice, however, the line between committee 
and public, between solicitor and solicited is not so 
readily drawn. The names printed on the deluge 
of stationery which comes by the morning mail are 
a fiction; the whole town is the committee. What 
is taking place is not a mere benevolent enterprise. 
Doubtless that is the eventual and ultimate object. 
But for the time being and in its effect on the 
home folks it is in round terms a conspiracy which 
is spreading with astonishing speed and engulfing 
all one's associates. One is walking on seemingly 
familiar ground, but every inch of it is overspread 
with an invisible net. There is no telling at all 
when one shall inadvertently wander into its 
meshes. 

The entire delicate mechanism of mutual confi- 
dence in society, in business, in the very home has 
been undermined; so that one is at a loss as to 
whom to trust and whom to suspect. One gets 
invitations and instinctively accepts them. But be- 
fore long one discovers that the very social ameni- 
ties have been taken over by the campaign organi- 
zation. A luncheon has ceased to be (for the 
duration of the campaign at least) a friendly hour's 
companionship, it has become one of the numerous 



Our Boys Freed Them- 

WONT YOU FEED THEM? 




Our Boys Freed Them— 

WON'T YOU FEED THEM? 




SHALL WE SAVE THEM? 

WHAT WILL YOU DO? 



I plead for this mother. 

I plead for this babe at her breast. 

I plead for ;housands of starving children 

Starvation is winning — while you wait 

I plead for your generosity, so that THEY may live. 



■iM^&ki^:ML^^a..:M 



Our Boys FREED 
Them Won't You ^ 
FEED Them? ^ 



JiWISH 
SUFFERER 




CAMPAIGN POSTERS 



A CAMPAIGN 99 

methods of soliciting contributions. And what is 
true of the noon repast applies with equal force to 
dinners, card parties, the links and the club. 
There is no safety anywhere. The whole com- 
munity has been reorganized overnight into a 
mutual association for soliciting funds on behalf 
of the Jewish or Polish or Armenian war sufferers. 
The teller at the bank, the stationer across the street, 
the bootblack around the corner, are no longer in- 
terested in their usual respective businesses; they 
are each and all the secret agents of the Relief 
Committee. 

With the home and family life matters have gone 
even worse. The domestic establishment has for 
the moment been shelved and its place has been 
taken by a subsidiary of the campaign forces. 
The mother of the household is now the captain of 
a team assigned to the exploitation of a specified 
territory, which as all charity should, begins at 
home. Her badge is a mere external though im- 
pressive decoration. What astonishes her own 
husband particularly is the vast extent of her in- 
formation about the past history, the present needs, 
and the future possibilities of her beneficiaries. 
One has never suspected her gifts of organization 
and resourcefulness as a business getter before. 
What a tremendous asset she could have been in 
her husband's economic enterprises! 



100 THEJEWPAYS 

The wife is no more than the leading factor in 
the plot. The dramatis personae include one's 
children and even one's very domestic servants. 
The cook is only incidentally a culinary expert. 
Primarily he is an Italian and a member of the 
Auxiliary of the Milk Fund for Sicilian Babies. 
The chauifeur has his own racial affiliations, and 
though he continues perfunctorily to perform his 
customary secular duties his chief and absorbing 
interest now is in determining by what methods he 
might most efficiently make the contribution of his 
employer to the Association for the Blinded and 
Crippled by the War commensurate with the said 
employer's income. The eldest heir of the name 
announces modestly that he has resolved to turn 
over the entire savings of a lengthy and arduous 
lifetime to the French Orphans' Fund and there is 
a query in his voice as to the exact figure that his 
parent's contribution would come to should the lat- 
ter, as he must, match it in a decent ratio to his own 
resources and sacrifice. 

The outcome of this universal and persistent 
grilling is but a matter of time and endurance. 
In the end no mortal man can successfully hold 
out, and when the surrender inevitably comes, let 
it not be supposed that it is a mere matter of finan- 
cial surrender. One capitulates unconditionally. 
And that involves (first of all, to be sure) a mone- 



A CAMPAIGN 101 

tary donation of handsome proportions, but chiefly 
a going over to the ranks of the enemy. One has 
m yielding, made common cause with the con- 
spirators and tacitly agreed to do unto others as he 
has all this while been done by. 



CHAPTER XI 

THE CONDUCT OF A CAMPAIGN 
AN INTERIOR VIEW 

WHAT has just preceded is but an account of 
what every American has lived through 
while this community was in the throes of the cam- 
paign. It is an attempt at portraying what occurs 
on this side of the footlights and is visible to the 
throng in the pit. What goes on in the inner re- 
cesses of the stage in the process of assembling this 
amazing spectacle, is a phase of the story that is not 
so well known ; but it is far and away the most im- 
pressive. I do not pretend to know to what heights 
this inner organization has attained in other bodies, 
but it is precisely here that the new director of the 
A. J. R. C. made his unique contribution to the 
labors and achievements of the American Jewish 
Relief Committee. The details of campaigning, the 
toil of coimtry-wide organization, the complexities 
of publicity are largely mechanical tasks. They 
demand persistent energy and indefatigable appli- 
cation. And these qualificatiorxS have been very 
notable in the equipment of the earlier managc- 

10^ 



A CAMPAIGN 103 

ment. What distinguished Mr. Billikopf was, as I 
have previously intimated, a rare personal force, a 
matchless capacity for winning to his side strategic 
personalities and recruiting them into the service of 
his enterprise. 

It is this valuable gift that has enabled the new 
director of the A. J. R. C. to improve so richly on 
the past and to write a new chapter in the history 
of war philanthropy. He had not, as it will be 
remembered, any very considerable acquaintance 
among the leading figures of American Jewry, and 
in New York he had been practically a stranger. 
He had set down in his little note book a brief list 
of salient names, and had mentally resolved that 
though he was to be himself the titular Commander- 
in-Chief, he would make these influential men and 
women the generals in his forthcoming enterprise. 
The name was virtually all he knew of Mr. Jacob 
H. Schiff , of Mr. Felix M. Warburg, of Mr. Nathan 
Straus, of Mr. Henry Morgenthau and of Mr. Louis 
Marshall, and of half a dozen others. 

He proceeded to get behind these names to the 
reality. He convinced himself, by way of a begin- 
ning, that he had the rarest of merchandise to offer 
to these influential persons and that it was, there- 
fore, inevitable that they should become interested. 
It was this one twist in his psychology that saved 
him from failure. His predecessors had rational- 



104 THE JEW PAYS 

ized the state of things differently. They had hesi- 
tated to approach significant personalities because 
it had seemed to them that they had little to offer 
to their patrons. They were asking for large 
contributions (so they reasoned) and were giving 
nothing in return for them; therefore, their delicate 
sense told them it would be extremely presumptuous 
to accept, in addition to financial assistance, the 
time and devoted interest of their clients. 

Mr. Billikopf stated the case to himself in char- 
acteristic terms. Far from regarding the transac- 
tion as accruing to the benefit of one side alone, he 
fell back on his grasp of realistic psychology and 
arrived at the somewhat startling conclusion that in 
all philanthropy, and especially in war benevolence, 
the benefit, in so far as it is one-sided, redounds 
almost exclusively to the giver. In large measure, 
he owed this inverted but upright logic to Mr. 
Nathan Straus, who some time before had altered 
the slogan "Give till it hurts" to read "Give till it 
feels good," and our new director, taking counsel 
with himself, came to see the relationship between 
solicitor and solicited in some such light as this: 

"Of course, I have no material stock in my trade, hut 
where has it ever been set down that material goods are 
the one species of irresistible merchandise? It is as 
true as it ever was that what men and women most 
earnestly seek is the intangible, unexchangeable, and 



A CAMPAIGN 105 

imperishable article. I am a trafficker in sympathy, and 
it is only a question of skillful merchandising, of com- 
petent methods in convincing my clientele of the supreme 
worth of the goods I offer them." 

So Mr. Billikopf proceeded to avail himself of 
the really fundamental assets in his trade. Pri- 
marily, he was not interested in obtaining huge 
financial contributions from his leading figures. 
Great sums he regarded as being valuable to his 
purposes only in so far as they possessed psycho- 
logical value — that is to say, in so far as they con- 
stituted an incentive to other givers. Often enough, 
to be sure, he went to disproportionate lengths in 
his endeavors to raise prospective contributions to 
some higher figure. He had worked up a scale in 
which each man or woman had his or her definite 
place, and he had made it a rigid policy never, as 
far as it was in his power, to permit any contribu- 
tion to slide below the level he had set for it. But 
all this was part and parcel of his larger conception 
of the policy of the organization. In many an in- 
stance he felt that he could well afford to invest in 
publicity a sum actually greater than the donation 
he was aiming for. But the issue and success of an 
entire campaign often depended on the size of the 
offering of a given prominent person. If, for in- 
stance, the leading citizen of Atlanta should be 
known to have cut his share below a previously ap- 



106 THE JEW PAYS 

pointed figure, the fact would be nothing less than 
a kind of sabotage of the Atlanta campaign as a 
whole. Lesser persons would inevitably be guided 
by the pace set for them by the leader of their city ; 
and the net result of such an apparently insignifi- 
cant mishap at the outset would be not only a 
reduction in the aggregate, but a weakened, disor- 
ganized campaign and a virtually complete loss of 
those by-products of an intense atmosphere, which 
Mr. Billikopf always held to be the most valuable 
domestic increment of the entire affair. 

It became, therefore, one of the fundamentals in 
the new technique to wind up the financial phase of 
a campaign before the public spectacle had begun. 
The preliminary maneuvers received the most de- 
tailed and careful manipulations. Commonly the 
curtain-raiser took the form of a luncheon or dinner 
given to a carefully selected, — and as a rule small, 
— group. It was essential that this group should 
include not only the financially and socially repre- 
sentative, but the utmost care was necessary in the 
selection to avoid an inadvertent chilling of the en- 
thusiasm of the gathering. And this involved the 
most painstaking scrutiny of each prospective guest 
— a research into his past philanthropic record, his 
social temperament, and his recent and present re- 
lationship with his fellow citizens. To the local 
officers had, of course, to be delegated the details of 



A CAMPAIGN 107 

such a program, but in outline the director from 
headquarters became for the time being a delver 
into the communal ins and outs of every city which 
was about to undertake a relief campaign. Much 
of the data thus acquired was conveyed to the 
speaker who was invariably detailed to address this 
pre-campaign meeting. The speakers, by the by, 
ranged from bishops to financiers and back again 
to nationally known rabbis. Dr. Stephen S. Wise 
and Dr. Nathan Kraus gave, perhaps, more un- 
stintingly of their time and their talents than the 
rest. But the honor list extends to every comer 
of the country and embraces well-nigh every name 
of oratorical importance. 

It was not, however, in recruiting talent or even 
in the development of the technique of publicity in 
the ordinary sense that the new director made his 
departure from the past. The achievement, to put 
it roundly, consisted in a vigorous application to the 
task in hand of the fundamentals of psychology. I 
am not sure whether a publicity expert would find 
any startling improvement in the material achieve- 
ments of the new director as compared with those 
of his predecessors. Emphatically the new start 
was a matter of marshaling unused private re- 
sources. The earlier management had looked 
upon the prominent men in Jewry as its chief asset 
in the direct raising of funds. The new manage- 



108 THE JEW PAYS 

ment turned its attention to the problem of securing 
the cooperation of newer and less known men by 
making an astute use of the fame and influence of 
these leading figures. Mr. Billikopf saw in such 
personalities as Mr. Straus and Mr. Schiff far 
vaster possibilities than the fortunes they might be 
induced to contribute. Names like theirs had quite 
a magic potency which, properly harnessed, could 
be rendered instrumental in bringing in untouched 
millions and injecting a spirit into the proceedings 
hitherto undreamed of. All of these men and a 
considerable number of others were heartily dis- 
posed to be harnessed, since they were already 
members of the council of the committee. The new 
director invited their attention to the tremendous 
services they were capable of contributing to the 
cause they were so vitally interested in by lending 
their names directly and with a minimum of reserve 
to the process of campaigning. The suggestion 
was irresistible. Never before had such eminent 
men of affairs participated so constantly and so 
devotedly in the interests of a philanthropy as did 
Messrs. Jacob H. Schiff", Nathan Straus, Louis 
Marshall, Julius Rosenwald, Abram Elkus, and 
Henry Morgenthau in the interest of the American 
Jewish Relief Committee. 

Each of these men at one period or another gave 
a kind of blank check to the management. Each 



A CAMPAIGN 109 

wrote innumerable letters to prospective contribu- 
tors who required special incentives. Mr. Schiff 
and Mr. Straus, despite their advanced age, were 
ever ready to make distant journeys, whenever in 
the judgment of the committee their presence was 
required in the opening of a campaign. Mr. Elkus 
and Mr. Morgenthau, during 1918, became regular 
bookings in the committee's far-flung circuit. 

It would yield interesting results if one were to 
estimate the incalculable fortunes that were de- 
flected into the cofl'ers of relief in consequence of 
the personal influence exerted by these men at the 
suggestion of their young generalissimo. I have a 
vivid picture of the latter, flanked at his desk by a 
pair of telephones, in constant conspiratorial com- 
munication with the princes of earth. Latest re- 
ports indicate (he confides to one of these) that the 
leading personage of San Francisco will sabotage 
the California campaign by scrimping his proper 
share. Of course, one might withhold publicity in 
the matter until the end, but it were best if a little 
effective pressure could be brought on certain defi- 
nite points of his position. Would Mr. A. write 
him in brief explaining the urgency of the situa- 
tion? Or — the chairman of the State com- 
mittee of Oklahoma is in the city on business. He 
has been an indefatigable and most valuable 
worker; a new campaign in his State is about to be 



no THE JEW PAYS 

launched; and theie is no telling how salutary to 
his personal spirits and the general result an in- 
vitation to lunch by Mr. B. would be. Or — an 
attempt is being made to line up the insurance 
fraternity on behalf of the forthcoming campaign 
in the city. Mr. X. is not only a wealthy and 
prominent member of the trade, but he is consumed 
with immoderate social ambitions. His acceptance 
of the chairmanship of the Insurance Men's Com- 
mittee would be a foregone conclusion, if only Mr. 
C. could manage to be present at the committee's 
organization meeting to-morrow evening and bestow 
certain subtle signs of recognition upon him. The 
device, once one has captured it, is capable of in- 
finite variation, and Mr. Billikopf's cabinet of fame 
and distinction is at his service for them all. 

The human instrument, in brief, is firmly grasped 
in the nimble hands of our director and its every 
stop played upon to excellent purpose. He has 
studied and charted and graphed its possibilities in 
infinite detail. Given a specified impulse and he 
can, with striking accuracy, forecast the response. 
That, in substance, is the essence of his technique. 
The mechanics of mere organization, the intricate 
problems of public campaigning, he leaves to those 
who are gifted with the leaning and skill for that 
sort of thing: his is a novel and distinct trade in 
itself. And this trade is marked by a simplicity 





IN THE WHIRL OF A CAMPAIGN 



A CAMPAIGN 111 

and a freedom from abstruse technicality character- 
istic of the artist and the pioneer in science. There 
are no fantastic instruments in his shop, no bustle 
and scramble, no impressive files and devices. He 
is but a modest searcher into the recesses of human 
motive, a practitioner in the art of making human 
contacts. 

To the untrained mind there is a suggestion of 
cynicism in the contemplation of such an art. It 
thinks of a cold and somewhat desiccated adept, 
removed from the common emotions and concerns 
of everyday humanity, insensitively dissecting and 
laying bare the sacred infirmities of our nature. It 
is an overdrawn picture. This new arrival in the 
ranks of the subtler professions is not in the least 
remote. He is very much a part of his own subject 
matter — that is precisely why he is so astonishingly 
effective at it. He regularly begins his analysis 
with the nearest specimen at hand — himself. And 
he arrives in the directest way imaginable at the 
commonplace conclusion that though mankind is 
very profoundly moved by the impulse of unaided 
sympathy, the instinct for generosity is exposed to 
other modes of irritation and is no more immune 
than other human appetites to jading. Men are 
what they are, and it would be mere scrupling sen- 
timentality to forbear when other powerful motives 
may so readily in the interests of a good cause be 



112 THE JEW PAYS 

called into play. The craving for adulation, self- 
advancement, and common vanity may not be 
creditable to the race; but it is idle to deny that 
they are part of all our equipment and it would be 
sheer negligence to decline them recognition, when 
the welfare of millions is at stake. 

This resort to a subtler motivation by the em- 
ployment of personal influences in due time de- 
velops into an instrument of the widest utility. 
Just as the Rosenwald contribution, coupled with 
the ten per cent, formula upon which it was con- 
ditioned, was at once adopted by numberless lead- 
ers in other places, so the device of direct individual 
pressure soon became a fundamental principle in 
local organization everywhere. Something in the 
nature of a hierarchy of social and commercial 
prestige was gradually elaborated; the national 
figures communicated certain forms of influence to 
a limited list of prominent men and women in 
various localities, and these in turn conveyed a 
similar form of motivation to strategic individuals 
in their respective districts; until the time came 
when every hamlet in the country was in some sort 
a link in the exquisitely graduated chain. This 
broad-gauged system was, furthermore, being con- 
tinually supplemented by a parallel mechanism of 
official stimulation. The President of the United 
States having set the pace by his proclamation, the 



A CAMPAIGN 113 

organization succeeded in interesting, first, gov- 
ernors of states, then chief executives of municipali- 
ties, to give the enterprise -a public send-»oif . 

The purely monetary results of this astute man- 
agement were enormous, as a mere glance at the 
figures would suffice to show. But the spiritual and 
social by-products of the intensive cultivation of a 
communal esprit de corps surpassed all expecta- 
tions. New blood was infused into the civic and 
philanthropic leadership of scores of cities. Men 
and women without number and in every part of 
the country who had never before been active in 
communal affairs were initiated into the ways of 
social usefulness, and came away feeling that there 
were responsibilities for them which they could 
never again disregard. And, contrary to the com- 
mon assumption, the common effort of disinterested 
people in behalf of a cause removed from barter 
and profit has served to knit indifferent and often 
exclusive and distrustful groups into a closer and 
more intimate community of understanding and 
cooperation. 



CHAPTER XII 

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF GIVING 

A GLANCE at some of the salient facts in the 
history of war relief suggests a number of 
curious and rather pertinent generalizations. 
There is, to begin with, something striking to the 
imagination in the spectacle of huge fortunes accu- 
mulated upon foundations so intangible and impon- 
derable. One sees practical men of affairs, whose 
outlook and habit of mind has trained them 
(presumably) to a rigid conception of values, sud- 
denly and unaccountably flinging the principles of 
a life-time to the winds and engaging not merely 
their material resources, but their enthusiasm and 
their high-priced time and energy upon a fantastic, 
airy venture which yields no visible returns. In 
ordinary times, in moments when we lightly think 
of these men as being most tliemselves, you could 
not very easily get them to participate in activities 
outside the well-defined boundaries of their usual 
affairs. When all is said and done, the lion's share 
of the income of relief societies comes, after all, 
out of the pockets of people broadly belonging to 
the ranks of business — people popularly classified 
as the level-minded, the profit-seeking, the hard- 

114 



GIVING 115 

headed, th-e unsentimental. And one beholds them 
hobnobbing with social workers and charitable 
ladies, lavishly squandering their substance and 
their talents upon inconsequential concerns, weakly- 
yielding to altruistic appeals, often even lending a 
hand in propagating them — and one wonders in- 
voluntarily. What has become of the far-famed 
tough back-bone of our most substantial class? 

And this interest, be it noted, shows none of the 
ear-marks of the temporary hobby. It endures 
with unabated zest, not merely throughout an entire 
campaign, but holds its own from year to year and 
grows in intensity as time goes on. It is seldom, 
indeed, that the personnel of committees is changed 
to any appreciable extent in a given State or city, 
unless it is by the adherence of new converts to the 
faith. The appetite for good works far from show- 
ing symptoms of getting jaded, seems unmistakably 
to grow by what it feeds on. Other observers have 
noted, and the statistics confirm, that contributions 
tend, broadly speaking, to increase in geometrical 
progression. Defection from the ranks of donors 
is even rarer than back-sliding in the councils of 
active workers. 

It is a strange phenomenon. Mankind is notori- 
ous for its capacity for fatigue. It tires of nearly 
everything. Men grow weary of their work and 
of their pleasures. There is no telling to what de- 



116 THEJEWPAYS 

gree reform and revolution, the rise of new sects in 
religion and the decay of old ones, the migration 
of races, and the exchange of monarchies for re- 
publics and republics for Soviets — there is no tell- 
ing to what extent all mutations in the body politic 
are influenced by the element of fatigue. If only 
populations could be kept interested, or at least 
indifferent, and disinclined to change, the heads of 
statesmen and pontiffs would, perhaps, not turn 
gray so prematurely. Yet the war relief engineer 
has been with us this half a decade with all his 
shouting and trumpeting and nagging and cajoling 
and downright threatening; and not a rumble any- 
where of mutiny, not a stir anywhere to depose him. 
Still, as in the earliest blissful days of the autumn 
of 1914, the procession of magi bearing gifts moves 
on, headed for his sanctum — excepting only that its 
ranks are fuller and its burthens richer. 

Is it not legitimate, then, to inquire into the 
sources of this astonishing vitality and growth? 
When the American Jewish Relief Committee, 
which congratulated itself upon its achievements in 
harvesting ten million dollars two years ago, now 
confidently sets out to raise twenty-five millions, 
with every sign pointing toward success, the search 
for the hidden springs of its mechanism becomes 
irresistible. Were the Jewish organizations alone 
in this uninterrupted progress, one might be in- 



GIVING 117 

clined to answer that Jews have a habit of benevo- 
lence. But they are not alone. Drives without 
end or limit continue among us as if no armistice 
had ever been signed. We have scarcely done with 
the Near East, when the victims of the latest Italian 
earthquake are upon us. The Salvation Army 
scrapes its posters oflf the hoardings, only to make 
room for the placards of the Boy Scouts. The 
Victory Loan orators clear the rostrum, only to be 
followed by the Knights of Columbus. But the 
Jews themselves have kicked far out of the traces 
of mere tradition. Even they have not made a 
habit of accumulating imperial fortunes annually 
for distribution among the needy. The habit 
theory will not hold water. The indulgence in 
voluntary sacrifice is not pleasant enough to become 
second nature to any race. 

Well, there has been the widest range of theoriz- 
ing. Well-disposed psychologists have taken the 
shortest route to truth, and have submitted that the 
response is merely proportionate to the emergency. 
Mankind, they have explained, is normally moved 
to generosity by the spectacle of calamity, regard- 
less of previous training and habits of thrift. The 
same man who will keep a whole office staff up 
until midnight to locate a missing penny in the ac- 
counts, will give away half a year's income without 
a qualm. Mr. Billikopf, as we know, hold* 



118 THE JEW PAYS 

tenaciously to the ancient doctrine that those who 
have given their talents to the accumulation of 
great wealth here below, are most inclined to lay 
up treasures in Heaven where they may be least 
exposed to corrosion and theft. Others, on the 
other hand, have made much of the "motivation of 
vanity" and have seen an astute business sense in 
the exchange of. large sums for still larger returns 
in social and even economic prestige. I am not 
eager to enter the discussion either as an umpire 
or as an added contestant. If I must offer a judg- 
ment, I should lean to the conclusion that the truth 
is with them all. There is no more a uniform 
philanthropic mind than there is an integrated mind 
among the mass of men who compose an army. 
Every class and temperament has been represented 
on the contributors' lists, and there is no theory but 
applies to some, and none that can fit them all. 
Between Nathan Straus, who had to be restrained 
from giving away his very home, and the insurance 
agent who looks upon his association with the Com- 
mittee as a subtle mechanism of business-getting, 
there is a long road and there is room enough on it 
for every conceivable motive in real or factitious 
generosity. 

Doubtless, the incentive of pure mercy is at once 
the most potent and of the widest application. Cer- 
tainly, this is true of the earliest stages. Witness 



GIVING 119 

the spontaneous enthusiasm of the classic mass- 
meeting at Carnegie Hall, and the warm response 
everywhere, when once the state of suffering abroad 
became manifest. It is, I believe, in sustaining an 
even level of interest that the influence of other 
impulses plays a real part. I have, myself, been 
impressed time and time again, as I observed the 
progress of campaigns, to how vast an extent work- 
ers and contributors alike are moved by immediate, 
as distinguished from remote, incentives. There is 
a civic phase in the matter of war philanthropy 
which is commonly overlooked. In most of the 
recent drives the element of pure benevolence is 
very slightly stressed; and for the most excellent 
psychological reasons. The participants have by 
this time ceased to visualize with any great vivid- 
ness the tragedy which their aid is to mitigate. 
Subconsciously, they are, of course, aware of the 
uhimate destination of their funds; but what in- 
terests them directly is that dear old Michigan shall 
go "over the top" and incidentally teach proud, 
disdainful New York that Western States know how 
to be generous when duty calls. Now that the war 
is over, it can give no comfort to the enemy to sug- 
gest that the same subtle motive works in the raising 
of volunteers for our armed forces. The given 
community is, of course, primarily moved by the 
patriotic sense, but directly the pride of the imme- 



120 THE JEW PAYS 

diate locality counts for vastly more. One wants 
to beat Germany, no doubt; but Germany is a long 
way off, and the satisfaction of beating the adjacent 
village or the next State is enormously keener. 

An added influence springs out of the curious 
human club-sense. The hardest work an organizer 
in any field has to do is to get people to cross his 
threshold. Once they are in, he can trust them not 
only to stay in, but to drag every one of their family 
and acquaintance, and every passer-by, in after 
them. It is a commonplace phenomenon. I may 
have some very lively objections to the synagogue 
or the Methodist church, but having been persuaded 
to join in its activities, I have become more than 
a mere member. I have become a missionary. 
But only yesterday Mr. Jonas Weil may have com- 
plained that the War Relief Committee was a pest 
and a nuisance; but somehow or other a member 
of his family or of his firm has succeeded in bring- 
ing him in, and from now on he will not only con- 
tribute heavily and with good grace, but he will 
regard every one of his friends and associates who 
remain outside as a quitter and a slacker and will 
never rest until they are in with him. How far 
Mr. Jonas Weil's behavior is a complex of the in- 
stinct for proselyting and the desire to see the rest 
of the world in his own shoes, I am willing to leave 
to the experts to determine. 



CHAPTER XIII 

THE SHARE OF THE OTHERS 

FROM its very inception, the movement for 
saving the Jewish people in the war-torn 
countries from annihilation assumed something 
vastly broader than a tribal or sectarian character. 
It will be remembered that President Wilson gave 
the movement his blessing and support before it 
had scarcely begun. But the American people, as 
a whole, seem to have realized from the first that 
when men and women and children are hungry and 
suffering, their origin and their faith and their 
local habitation are the least important things 
about them. Such has, time out of mind, been the 
American position wherever and whenever misfor- 
tune befell human beings. And this disposition of 
Americans is, I assume, a demonstration of the in- 
ternational color of American thinking and sym- 
pathy, and reminds one very vividly how keenly 
alive the American people are to their own inter- 
national origin. 

But whether it was a too sensitive Jewish pride 
or a fidelity to its record for independence in benev- 

121 



122 THE JEW PAYS 

olence, there was for a long time a reluctance on 
the part of the leaders to accept contributions from 
the non-Jews. Even to this day there persists in 
various quarters a very deep distrust of the non- 
sectarian campaign, although this method of ap- 
peal has proved in many places its worth, not only 
by a virtual doubling of collections, but especially 
by its contribution to an enhanced community 
spirit and a better mutual understanding between 
Jew and Gentile wherever the plan has been tried. 

But despite the proud reluctance and reticence of 
the American Jew himself, contributions large and 
small, financial and moral, became a feature of no 
mean proportion from the very outset. The gen- 
erous non-Jew, undaunted by tlie modesty of his 
Jewish neighbor, simply insisted that he shall not 
be excluded from participation in a Christian cause 
even though its beneficiaries might be the un- 
baptized. To these dedicated men and women this 
was not a cause for any sort of limited group, 
however genuine or artificial the lines that sepa- 
rated that group from the rest of mankind might 
be. Churchmen reminded their followers that 
they owed a two-fold debt to the people of Christ 
— one, for that people's gift to the world of its 
faith and its prophets, and the other for the exile 
and sorrows which Jews have been subjected to in 
the past at the hands of would-be Christians and 



SHARE OF OTHERS 123 

in the name of Christianity. And laymen remem- 
bered that Jews in their respective American com- 
munities had ever been the first to participate in 
public undertakings with their money and their 
time, whether these undertakings were of a broadly 
communal character or of a distinctly sectarian and 
non- Jewish kind. 

But, primarily, the American Gentile looked 
upon the relief of Jews in Europe as a purely 
human task. They declined to rationalize the 
matter. People were in want, and that was 
enough. As Mr. George D. Armistead, the post- 
master of San Antonio, in declining to accept 
thanks for his share in the campaign conducted in 
his city, expressed it: "I did what I could in this 
noble work and I shall count myself undeserving 
of the respect of my fellow Americans if I ever 
thought of allowing race, creed or color to stand 
between me and the duties of a real man when con- 
fronted anywhere in the world by starvation and 
distress." North and South, on the Atlantic sea- 
board, in the middle-West and on the Pacific, men 
and women who were faithful to the humane 
American tradition, or who had not forgotten their 
Bible, or who had had dealings with Jews in their 
own villages, came forward enthusiastically to do 
their part in every campaign, egged on by a sense 
that a people, which in spite of twenty centuries of 



124 THE JEW PAYS 

persecution could still retain enough of their vigor 
to be continually making contributions to the 
world's civilization and be worthy citizens every- 
where, should not be allowed to perish in the 
shambles of a world gone mad. 

Judge E. B. Muse of Dallas has expressed, I 
venture to hope, the attitude of high-minded non- 
Jews in this matter in the most eloquent words- 
words which coming from a Jew would have been 
ungracious, but are all the nobler for their source : 

"All we have to do is to stop and think — think, what 
the Jew has done for the world — ^^think what a debt the 
world owes the Jew, to make honest, conscientious men 
step forth and do their best now in behalf of the Jew. 
The Jew first pointed man to the worship of the only 
true and living God, a personal God, a God of love, 
law, justice and mercy. 

"The Bible, the Ten Commandments, the Sermon on 
the Mount — the foundation of all law in all civilized 
lands comes to us from the Jew. 

"We proudly appropriate it all as our very own, 
then proceed promptly to deprecate and depreciate the 
source from whence it came. 

"Christ was a Jew ; we worship, praise and prate about 
the lowly Nazarene — We revere the spot and venerate 
the land in which He was born, and then straightway 
turn and revile the race that gave Him birth. 

Oh generous, consistent Gentile! We take the gift and 
welcome it to our bosom, then turn our backs and shut 
the door in the face of the giver. Whoever saw a Jew 
beggar — whoever saw a Jew begging for bread in this 



SHARE OF OTHERS 125 

country of ours? Point the time and place. They are 
a proud, sensitive people. They are a frugal, econom- 
ical, thrifty and progressive people — all they ask is a 
chance and opportunity to live and be happy. 

They have contributed of their blood and treasure un- 
stintedly to every good cause for freedom and humanity's 
sake — from Bunker Hill to Yorktown and from York- 
town all the way to this good hour. 

No purer patriots ever lived, no more loyal friends 
had any man or country than the Jews, who for country 
and friendship sake financed Washington in the dark 
days of the American Revolution. 

The history of the world tells the story of their un- 
dimmed devotion and undying love for freedom. 

It appears to me to be not only a duty, but it seems 
as well it should be the pleasure of every thinking, lib- 
erty-loving Gentile in America, to arise and say — ^Yes — 
yes, this is the first time I have ever been called upon 
to help the Jew — God help me, I will do my best, it may 
not be much, but much or little, I will do my best." 

Writing to the press of his State anent the com- 
bined campaign for one hmidred thousand dollars 
for the Jewish War Sufferers and the Jewish Wel- 
fare Board, Judge W. R. Allen of the Supreme 
Court of North Carolina stated the case for Ameri- 
cans' cooperation with Jews in their supreme need 
in these emphatic terms: 

"The Jews have been foremost in giving of their time 
and money for the upbuilding and improvement of our 
city and country. 



126 THE JEW PAYS 

They gave more than a third of the cost of our public 
hospital, have bought liberally of Liberty bonds, War 
Saving stamps, and have been generous contributors to 
the Red Cross and the Y.M.C.A. 

Shall we be less generous and liberal than they? 

Our President has said 'Give until it hurts.' I am not 
sure but that Nathan Straus has expressed the duty bet- 
ter when he says 'Give until it feels good.' 

Jeanie Deans in her plea before the Queen for the 
life of her sister, regarded as one of the most eloquent 
passages in all literature, said truly, 'When the hour of 
death comes it isn't what we have done for ourselves, 
but what we have done for others that we think of most 
pleasantly.' 

I regard this as an exceptional opportunity to express 
our appreciation to the Jews for what they have done. 
If I had it in my power as Chairman of the Goldsboro 
Jewish Relief Committee, / should prevent the acceptance 
of any contribution from the Jewish citizens of this com- 
munity, so that we, the non-Jews, might have the pleasure 
of raising the entire quota ourselves" 

I have, myself, seen scores of busy merchants, 
and still busier mothers, forgetting their normal 
duties for weeks at a time to devote themselves day 
and night without stint and without thought of 
themselves, to this work. Some drove motor cars 
over unknown and impassable roads to solicit in 
remote hamlets sums which in the aggregate barely 
equaled the value of their time. Others pounded 
typewriters or filed cards or talked from soap-boxes 



SHARE OF OTHERS 127 

or performed any one of a dozen clerical tasks on 
behalf of people whom they had never seen, in- 
habitants of countries whose names they could 
barely pronounce. I recall a banker in New Or- 
leans who shunned his office and his desk for an en- 
tire month, and that, before he had had time to re- 
cover from the effects of a major operation; while 
his wife turned over the care of her child in the 
midst of the influenza epidemic, to a paid nurse, so 
that she might, herself, head a woman's team of 
solicitors. 

And this splendid spirit, as it transcended the 
lines of race and creed, passed also beyond the 
boundaries of occupation and class. The wealthy 
and the influential did no more in proportion than 
the poor and the humble. Down in a town in 
Georgia a little group of young women proved 
once more that the love of mankind is no private 
privilege of the fortunate. They had been asked 
by the local committee to work for a little while 
after office hours in order to help wind up the 
campaign. The little while lengthened out until 
two in the morning. They stuck to their type- 
writers without complaint until the last letter had 
been written and the last card filed. Then the 
chairman off'ered them five dollars apiece for 
their services. With one accord they declined the 
off'er and begged that their labor be accepted as 



128 THE JEW PAYS 

their contribution to the town's quota. These girls 
were not Jewesses. Some of them would have been 
hard put to it to tell what a Jewess was. They were 
mere American girls. From a village in North 
Carolina there comes the report of an elderly 
spinster whose only source of income was a meager 
property inheritance amounting to no more than 
two hundred dollars a year. She was among the 
first to respond to an advertisement inserted by a 
Christian church in the local newspaper — the 
church not being of her own denomination — with 
a contribution of twenty-five dollars. 

Both for genuineness of sentiment and simplicity 
of language, I have no hesitancy in reproducing 
the letter which follows, as one of the purest docu- 
ments in the annals of man's love for his kind: 

J. S. MURROW 

MISSIONARY AMONG INDIANS 60 YEARS — 82 YEARS OLD 

Under God's Direction Founder of 

MURROW INDIAN ORPHANS' HOME 
Bacone, Oklahoma 

Atoka, Oklahoma April 20th 

Mr. Herbert H. Lehman 

Treasurer &c. 
Dear Sir 

I am not a Jew. — I am an old — worn out Christian — 
Indian Missionary — a Baptist. — 

Your God is my God. Your Father — my Father. Your 
people are my Master's people. Your brethren are my 



SHARE OF OTHERS 129 

brethren. My means are small — but my heart greatly re- 
joices because of this privilege of sending the enclosed 
one hundred dollars for the relief of the suffering and 
starving Jews in Europe. 

Sincerely, 

J. S. MURROW, — 
Atoka — Okla. 

More impressive, perhaps, but in no way differ- 
ing in spirit, was the conduct of a prominent citizen 
of Wilmington, Delaware, at the end of a stirring 
address. The speaker, who had been warned that — 
by a promise made to the community beforehand — 
no collections would be permitted at the meeting, 
was compelled before he had ended, by the clamor 
of a largely non- Jewish audience, not only to ac- 
cept pledges amounting to more than three-quarters 
of the quota assigned to the city for the entire 
campaign, but to accept the promise of this promi- 
nent citizen, that the quota would be either over- 
subscribed by the community or that he personally 
would make up the deficit. 

There is no parallel on record to this downright 
scramble on the part of men and women of other 
faiths to render service to a Jewish cause. One has 
but to read the hundreds of full-page advertise- 
ments in the press of our country to be struck with 
the depth and genuineness of this eagerness to help. 
The names of the individuals and firms and insti- 
tutions signed to these exhortations are a revelation, 



130 THEJEWPAYS 

and constitute in themselves an amazing chapter ir 
the history of human relations. Newspaper owners 
raced with bankers and business men; Protestant 
churches competed with Catholic bodies in their 
efforts to surpass one another's contributions. The 
newspapers gave of their space freely in news, edi- 
torials and in cartoons. And the churches, in ad- 
dition to lending their buildings and even the serv- 
ices of their clergy, vied with one another in pub- 
lishing, entirely without solicitation, full-page 
newspaper advertisements in which the plea of 
humanity and a fundamental Christianity was con- 
veyed more effectively than in any appeals made 
by Jews themselves. As an illustration, I repro- 
duce the facsimile of such an advertisement from a 
Louisiana newspaper on the opposite page. 

In towns and villages without number, where 
Jews were either non-existent or inert, the non- 
Jews took the initiative altogether. The people 
would read their governor's proclamation, or the 
mayor's of the near-by city, and resolve to do their 
share. They would call a meeting of the most 
influential citizens or the most generous or the most 
capable, and falling back on their experiences in 
Red Cross, Liberty Loan and United War Work 
drives, proceeded to initiate a campaign and do 
what was expected of them. A member of the 
Nortli Dakota Committee relates this incident: He 



Because Christ Commands It 

WE URGE EVERYONE TO HELP 
THE JEWISH SUFFERERS 

BECAUSE THEY NEED IT. BECAUSE WE- BELIEVE IN PAYING OUR DEBTS. 

Humanity Owes Much to The Jews 

Moses gave us the Moral Law; David voiced every cry of joy or sorrow of the human heart to Sod; 
Christ, after the flesh, born a Jew, taught in the Good Samaritan story— 

THAT WHO NEEDS MY HELP 
IS MY NEIGHBOR 

So- for Christ's sweet sake; HELP THE JEWISH SUFFERERS OVERSEAS with an open hand. 
In the U. W. W. campaign the Jews, knowing they would only get three million dollars out of the 
contributions; gave about twenty million dollars, and the Y. M. C. A; and the Red Cross were the 
beneficiaries of their liberality to about seventeen million dollars. 

If not for sweet charity's sake, at least not to be put to shame! let us help those who^ while giving 
to ours,' never before have asked us to give to (heirs. 

We Urge All Metliodisfs to Give m the Name of Qirilt 
Born of the House of David 

—First Methodist Church, 
A BIT OF PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY 



SHARE OF OTHERS 131 

had traveled many weary miles to one of the out- 
lying counties in his State in order to confer with 
certain leading men on methods of extending the 
State campaign into that region. He arrived at the 
little town which was the county seat, late in the 
evening. Happening to be acquainted with the 
local Supreme Court Judge, he drove up to his 
house. His honor, he learned, was not at home; 
he was attending a meeting at the Court House; so 
to the Court House our committee man went to 
find around a great table all the wealth and promi- 
nence of the district. He was about to withdraw 
in embarrassment at the intrusion, when the presi- 
dent of the local bank boisterously invited him to 
enter. "You are just in time," he said. "You 
might be able to help us. We were just organizing 
a campaign for Jewish relief." "Gentlemen," he 

turned to the others, "this is Mr. , Mr. 

this is our Jewish campaign committee." 

Not only in spirit, but in actual substance has 
the share of the Gentile in the cause of war-stricken 
Jewry been mounting higher and higher, until there 
is an inkling in the minds of many of the workers 
that it has become quite disproportionate. I have, 
myself, a suspicion that, incredible as it may seem, 
certain Jews, seeing the growing willingness of their 
non- Jewish neighbors to bear a part of the burden, 
are disposed to delegate it to them in its entirety. 



132 THE JEW PAYS 

It would therefore not be amiss at this time if some 
enterprising statistician were to determine just what 
portion of the funds that are now being collected 
are derived from Jewish and non- Jewish pockets 
respectively. Comparisons are odious, as Mrs. 
Malaprop held, but if they prove in this instance 
what I fear they might, the Jewish slacker will 
deserve all the odium that they may cast upon him. 
There are constant complaints, I am told authorita- 
tively, from committees in scattered parts of the 
country headed by non-Jews, that their Jewish fel- 
low-townsmen are remiss in doing their part. 
Chairmen write in from time to time to the directing 
heads of the committees asking for suggestions as 
to how such people might be brought to book. 
The answer, I would venture to suggest, in all cases, 
is the public exhibition of the names of backsliders 
wherever they may be found and in such a way 
that they will do the most good to the cause, and 
the most harm to Mr. Scrooge. 



CHAPTER XIV 

PROBLEMS OF DISTRIBUTION 

IN the collection of moneys it had proven im- 
practicable, even though desirable, to effect a 
fusion of the several committees and the constitu- 
encies which they represented. On the part of the 
immediate members of the committees there was 
and remains, to begin with, a pride of organization 
which constitutes a persistent and very real obstacle 
to amalgamation. In addition, the two minor 
bodies claim with an appreciable show of reason 
that, in spite of the inherent community of interest 
between all groups in Jewry and in spite of their 
common purpose in relation to the European situa- 
tion, there remains nevertheless a very real residue 
of difference which is bound to express itself in 
separate alignments. Admittedly, the People's 
Relief Committee is doing a share of the fund- 
raising which neither of its fellow-committees could 
do for it and which it would be wasteful to neglect. 
On the other hand, within the precincts of the Cen- 
tral Committee officials are prone to confess that 
while a large portion of its resources could undoubt- 
edly be increased if they were tapped by the 

133 



134 THE JEW PAYS 

mechanisms of the American Committee, neverthe- 
less, the aggregate of contributions coming from 
this element of Jewry would not in all probability 
be any greater and, not impossibly, even smaller. 
At any rate, and regardless of the logic of the situa- 
tion, it remains a fact that all efforts in the past 
four years to convert the triple body into a single 
unified and powerful organization have gone for 
naught. 

When, however, the question arose as to the best 
manner in which to dispose of the collected funds, 
the long-drawn-out discussion of the advantages 
and disadvantages of concentrated action was 
abruptly brought to a close with almost no argu- 
ment at all. In respect to distribution the minor 
committees readily perceived the undesirability of 
duplication and the virtual impossibility of their 
own direct administration of their respective trusts. 
Had their tasks been of an ordinary peace-time 
character their passionate sense of identity might 
even here have held them apart. But it was clearly 
out of the question for groups composed of such 
material as went into the making of the two immi- 
grant committees to engage in diplomatic negotia- 
tions, foreign exchange, and the complexities and 
perplexities of freight transportation across the 
Atlantic and the continent of Europe in time of war. 
Whether or not the rank and file of their member- 



DISTRIBUTION 135 

ship would prove more responsive to appeals made 
to them by their own leadership, no one could ex- 
pect trade union officials, rabbis, and small business 
men to conduct an undertaking which, whether you 
like it or not, is in the province of international 
bankers and large entrepreneurs. 

In its earliest days, to be sure, the Central Com- 
mittee had made an attempt to do its own dis- 
bursing. It had transported as early as October, 
1914, considerable funds to Palestine and to 
Austria, but this was at tlie time when the war had 
scarcely begun and the avenues of European in- 
tercourse had not yet become as effectually closed 
as they were soon to be. Neither Italy and 
Rumania on the one hand nor Turkey and Bulgaria 
on the other had as yet joined in the war. The 
Allied blockade of the continent had hardly as yet 
been thought of; and yet even under these compara- 
tively favorable circumstances the transaction had 
been fraught with no end of difficulties and expense. 
And it became obvious by this very experience itself 
that, as a measure both of dispatch and economy, a 
distributive union between the committees was in- 
evitable. In consequence we find on the 27th of 
November — precisely one week after the sums 
above referred to had been transmitted to the Old 
World by the Central Committee, a successful at- 
tempt being initiated on the part of the Executive 



136 THEJEWPAYS 

Committees of both organizations to effect a per- 
manent disbursement agency. On that date a 
meeting was called at the building of the United 
Hebrew Charities which culminated in the estab- 
lishment of the Joint Distribution Committee. It 
was easily agreed that the membership of this new 
body should consist of the Executive Committees 
of its constituent members. The very name of the 
new organization was a concession to the lively 
sense of identity of the separate collecting agencies. 
And its officers were drawn with an eye to the sen- 
sibilities of all elements. Mr. Felix M. War- 
burg, recently elected Treasurer of the American 
Committee, was made the Chairman of the new 
organization, while the active directorship was 
turned over to a prominent member of the Central 
Relief Committee. The People's Relief Commit- 
tee, having as yet not been formed, its constituency 
took no share in the proceedings. 

It took but one afternoon for the delegations of 
the two organizations to arrive at an agreement. 
The fundamental need for a common instrumen- 
tality was too patent to need discussion, and there 
prevailed at the conference such a liberal spirit of 
mutual trust and friendly cooperation that the cus- 
tomary bickerings regarding representation and 
leadership were automatically precluded. By the 
sheer accident of its constituency the American 



DISTRIBUTION 137 

Committee was freely recognized as possessing the 
preponderant qualifications for taking the initiative 
in the counsels of the new organization. Its mem- 
bership (apart from their extensive commercial 
affiliations in Europe) had had longer experience in 
extending relief abroad and therefore was in touch 
with a variety of groups and persons overseas who 
could at this time render valuable assistance. 
None the less the older Central Committee, both 
by virtue of its precedence in the field and because 
of its representative character, as well as in conse- 
quence of its profounder understanding of the 
problems of Jewiy in Eastern Europe, was ac- 
corded an equal position with its younger and more 
influential partner. 

The earliest operations of the Joint Distribution 
Committee extended chiefly to Palestine. It was 
from the Holy Land that the first direct cry for 
assistance had reached America. For half a cen- 
tury the Jewish immigrants of that country had been 
receiving regular support from their co-religionists 
in Germany and France and even in Russia and 
Rumania. And the declaration of the state of 
war, accompanied as it inevitably was by a dis- 
location of international relations, brought the 
severest consequences of misery upon these already 
pauperized colonies before it touched even the 
ghettoes. Theirs, above all others', was the most 



138 THEJEWPAYS 

urgen«t case and, in a sense, the immediate occasion 
for creating the disbursing agency. 

Ere long, however, the Joint Distribution Com- 
mittee addressed itself to the more comprehensive 
task. Utilizing the relationships which American 
Jewry had established with Russia in the days of 
the Kishineff pogroms, the directorate quickly 
initiated correspondence with the leaders of Jewry 
in that empire. Baron Guinzburg, M. Schlossberg, 
and their many associates who had proved them- 
selves such able and devoted workers in past emer- 
gencie*s, were again set to work and given plenary 
powers as the agents in their country of the joint 
American organization. In Austria the Allianz 
had had broad experience in administering aid to 
the Jews of Galicia. It was reorganized and ren- 
dered more representative by expanding its coun- 
cils to include the orthodox and labor elements. 
During and after the German invasion of the Pale 
it was necessary for the Committee to conduct its 
affairs through the medium of the German forces 
of occupation, and by all reports these relations 
were throughout in the highest degree satisfactory. 
The American State Department was from the first 
day to this, at once the closest and the most helpful 
of the committee's allies. Even before the entry 
of the United States into the war it was virtually 
impossible for private citizens, however influential. 



DISTRIBUTION 139 

to conduct a traffic of such immense proportions 
without proceeding through diplomatic and con- 
sular channels. After vve ourselves became a 
belligerent the difficulties of transportation and ex- 
change became more complex than ever. The re- 
lations of the committee with the German and 
Austrian authorities as well as with private agencies 
within those countries, had as a matter of course 
to cease. Shipping facilities diminished con- 
tinuously until they reached almost the vanishing 
point. Communication with the Eastern half of the 
European continent was almost completely cut off. 
The energies of the American Government and of 
the American people were, as was to be expected, 
deflected into military channels. And as if to com- 
plete the cycle of obstacles the formerly disguised 
chaos of the Czar's regime succumbed to open dis- 
integration and revolution. 

At this juncture the Committee found it expedient 
to shift its channels of action from the Central 
Powers to The Netherlands. The practical prob- 
lems and difficulties in carrying out ^his change 
were, as may be readily imagined, of the utmost 
complexity; and the organization resolved to send 
over a mission headed by Dr. Boris Bogen to con- 
duct negotiations with the governments affected as 
well as to open up communications through the 
North of Europe. In a very brief period Dr. Bogen 



140 THE JEW PAYS 

succeeded in establishing at The Hague a per- 
manent committee of leading Dutch Jews who have 
ever since very ably carried on an important phase 
of the overseas affairs of the Joint Distribution 
Committee. Their activities have come to be re- 
garded as an integral part of the New York body. 

But the progressive distintegration of the erst- 
while Russian Empire became an unending source 
of hindrance and obstacle to the distribudon of re- 
lief. Continuous warfare, the rise and fall of 
mushroom governments, the uncertainty of life and 
the insecurity of property, the breakdown of rail- 
way communication and of the entire economic 
process of the immense country, the erection of 
ever-new "national" boundaries, could not but in- 
terfere severely with the movements of relief funds 
and materials. It, in effect, put a virtual stop to 
all operations. The American and the Allied gov- 
ernments, which continued to exhibit the utmost 
goodwill, were to all practical purposes powerless 
to assist. Since the fall of the ancient regime no 
government had been recognized anywhere in 
Russia, and consequently no channels existed 
through which the influence of the Allied and asso- 
ciated governments could express itself. On the 
other hand, the cessation of active fighting between 
the major countries had resulted to a considerable 
extent in reestablishing a measure of communica- 



DISTRIBUTION 141 

tion between Western and Eastern Europe. De- 
spite the collapse of the Central Empires, the ending 
of the war was a forerunner of something like 
normal relations in the heart of Europe. In Ger- 
many and in most of the new states created out of 
the wreck of Austria, Allied influence was para- 
mount; so that it was at least possible to approach 
the outer walls of the Pale. 

Moreover, and as will be seen more explicitly 
later, the condition of the helpless Jewish people 
became both clearer and distinctly more aggravated. 
As long as the fighting continued, the American 
rescue agencies labored in the dark. One got 
occasional glimpses, to be sure, of the state of 
aff'airs over there from travelers, correspondents, 
and now and then from a sporadic report issuing 
directly from the Committee's own beneficiaries and 
representatives. It is common knowledge, how- 
ever, that reports from Russian Jewish sources 
were of the meagerest and the very worst that the 
New York offices received from anywhere. Now, 
with the opening up of the Continent, there came a 
sudden and most pungent revelation of the totally 
unimagined misery and decay that four and a half 
years of war had brought to the Jewries of old 
Russia; and the Jews of America stood appalled at 
the exhibition. Meantime, the horror, far from 
being an accumulation merely of the recent past. 



142 THE JEW PAYS 

was galloping on and growing continually worse 
and increasingly less controllable. It looked in- 
deed as if the sheer physical and nervous state of 
six millions of people had reached a stage beyond 
the ministrations of relief. What these people 
were obviously suffering from was now not merely 
the absence of ordinary physical human necessities. 
That might have been their case three years before, 
or even one year ago. At the moment, the Ameri- 
can agencies found themselves confronted with a 
population which had become, as a consequence of 
nearly five years of intense privation and suffering, 
utterly degraded. It was the backbone of East 
European Jewry that had been crushed. Pauperi- 
zation was the least of the terrible effects of a pro- 
longed siege. One was face to face with a great 
mass of humanity which had become devoid of 
nervous force, of the power to resist — almost of 
recognizable human form. Its vitality, its grip, 
its common human pride, almost its very will to 
life, had been destroyed. 

And yet, desperate apparently as the problem 
was, there was but one thing for organized Ameri- 
can Jewry to do. It was to plunge in with the 
utmost energy and to make an attempt at saving 
what remained. Dr. Boris Bogen, who had pre- 
viously distinguished himself by his success in The 
Netherlands, was once more dispatched abroad, 



DISTRIBUTION 143 

this time to Poland, to survey the field and to render 
such aid as the immediate emergency demanded. 
He remains there to this day — a plenipotentiary of 
the Joint Distribution Committee, a diplomatic 
official, a correspondent, a social expert, a modera- 
tor between hostile races, a purchasing agent, a food 
dispenser, a nurse and a comforter, all in one. He 
was lately supplemented by a comprehensive dele- 
gation, representative of all committees in America. 
He is constantly collaborating with scores of local 
agencies in Poland, in Galicia and Russia, most of 
whom he has himself set up. He and the merciful 
organizations whom he represents are doing all that 
human effort and sympathy can do. It is not a 
great deal, in the circumstances. He is spending 
millions of money and rescuing whole communities 
of children and women and men from death by star- 
vation and from a life which is worse than death. 
But no one is more keenly aware than they how far 
from the ends they have set for themselves are these 
painfully inadequate palliative efforts. The need 
of the moment is not merely greater financial re- 
sources — though that is the primary need — but a 
reconstructed medium to move in. And that is, of 
course, in a phrase, the problem that the period of 
war hands on to our era of peace. 



CHAPTER XV 

PROBLEMS FOR TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW 

AND now at last the war is over. At least it is 
officially and technically over west of the 
Rhine. Hostilities are at an end. Armistices and 
peace treaties of a sort have been signed. The 
American people have done their celebrating, they 
have paraded and cheered, they have put over the 
last public loan, and are now ready to return to 
business and the normal conduct of life. For what 
is transpiring in Central and Eastern Europe, and 
in a goodly share of the continent of Asia, they have 
neither understanding nor concern. How should 
they? They undertook to participate in a war 
against a single power, and that power has gone 
down to a ruin complete beyond the dream of 
patriotism. The German war is over; and with 
that happy consummation, the share of Americans 
in the business is at an end. After all is said 
and done, they belong in a world of their own. 
They have never had, and they cannot have now, 
any abiding interest in the rows and petty rivalries 
of a strange and distant climate. The conflict with 
Germany had, by an elaborate and well-sustained 

144 



PROBLEMS 145 

propaganda, come to have an intimate meaning for 
them. It had been idealized and dramatized. But 
the sequel is another affair. It is sordid and con- 
fused to the point of dullness. Leagues of nations 
and alliances, open diplomacy and secret covenants, 
the new international order, territorial claims and 
counter-claims, plebiscites, and the rights of racial 
minorities, are alien phrases to them. They are 
part of the jargon of European politics. And con- 
trary to the expectations of the sanguine, the politics 
of the Old World are to Americans as meaningless 
after the war as they were before. The New World 
will have problems and difficulties of its own which 
will be somewhat distinct and separate; and good 
Americans are naturally eager to grapple with 
them. 

Meantime, Europe is bleeding at her heart and 
in her vitals; the armistice was unhappily not a 
signal for universal disarmament and hand-shak- 
ing; it was, as a lone realist here and there had 
warned us beforehand that it would be, a bugle call 
proclaiming that Europe was at last and in earnest 
at war. Between the Rhine and the Pacific, the 
official count discovers no fewer than fifteen in- 
dividual wars. The actual number is doubtless 
much greater. There are class wars, and slightly 
reduced copies of the war for democracy and ideals, 
and just plain old-fashioned national wars. Guer- 



146 THEJEWPAYS 

rillas, pogroms, and civil strife of the most colorful 
variety, scar the continent all the way from Munich 
to Vladivostock, The carefully drawn line between 
Entente and Quadruple Alliance has been utterly 
obliterated. The precious small nations for whose 
preservation the great war was initiated and pro- 
longed, are now somewhat unideally conducting a 
set of small wars for each other's annihilation. 

It was, I always had a private conviction, a very 
careless thing to begin the long-awaited European 
war; but it was the sheerest absent-mindedness to 
encourage a revolution in Germany and the disin- 
tegration of Austria. Popular uprisings and the 
collapse of polyglot empires are interesting 
pastimes which are much easier to start than to 
bring to a convenient and satisfactory finish. It 
was one thing to defeat Austria; it is quite another 
to cure the madness which Austria held in check. 
It was one thing, and a comparatively simple one, 
to fight a wild dog, even if he were many -headed; 
it is quite another to cope with an entire brood of 
scurrying pups, savagely snapping at you in an ef- 
fort to devour one another. Wherefore it is not 
surprising that healthy Americans are disillusioned 
and annoyed and eager to wash their hands of the 
whole matter. 

In the very center of this beau spectacle — of this 
much-heralded new world — six millions of Jewish 



PROBLEMS 147 

babies and women and men find themselves heirs 
to an estate beside which even the chaos of the great 
war seems in retrospect like the veriest salvation. 
While America and Western Europe, with the able 
assistance of Japan, Porto Rico, and Siam, are busy 
fashioning a New World under the tutelage of the 
League of Nations, the realists of Eastern Europe, 
thoroughly familiar with the efficacy of scraps of 
paper, are making a somewhat undignified scramble 
for fails accomplis. The game of grab and hold is 
on with greater zeal than ever. The little statesmen 
of the Baltic and the Balkans have a firmer grasp 
of the idealisms and the aspirations of Europe than 
even Mr. Woodrow Wilson. The President of the 
United States may rejoice unhindered over the 
happy dissolution of the Central Empires; it is for 
none but the eyes of the President of Poland and 
the potentates of the Danube to behold the collapse 
of the Entente as well. Europe is in flames and 
wise men rush into the burning structure and save 
what they can. Now or never is the time to gratify 
old cupidities, to avenge past wrongs, to settle long- 
standing accounts, and to get even with ancient foes. 
And the oldest enemy as well as the most helpless is, 
f course, the Jew. Japan, with all her reputation 
for cunning is nowhere in it beside these Realpoli- 
tiker. The most that she could devise was con- 
queror's terms to a peaceful ally and neighbor at a 



148 THE JEW PAYS 

moment when the watchful Great Powers were not 
looking. They do it vastly better in East Europe. 
They have out-grown the child's play of diplomatic 
clap-trap. Conquered people may revive. The 
dead alone cease to trouble. 

East European Jewry finds itself exactly at the 
same point in the highway at the conclusion of the 
war as at its beginning. Only progress has become 
next to impossible. It is no longer a civilized high- 
way, subject to the laws of traffic. It has become 
a miserable by-way outside of the pale of organized 
mankind; its sides are a series of ambush, the nests 
of brigands, and its terminus a bag's end. The 
customary sanity and good-will of peace have 
brought no more respite to these people than had 
the customary solidarity of war. The ever-lasting 
threat of Allied patriotism to make the Germans an 
out-law nation, may or may not become a fact. 
Outlawry is the unofficial, but, therefore, the more 
effective, status of the Jewish people. Jewry has 
become a huge prison camp. America is collecting 
ever larger sums for its relief, but its condition is 
beyond the ministrations of a mere bodily amelio- 
ration. 

The commissions recently sent over there by the 
Joint Distribution Committee have returned with a 
message of despair. Some of them are, to be sure, 
going about the country appealing for renewed ef- 



PROBLEMS 149 

forts, but there is not one of them who will not 
confess that the problem of the East European Jew 
is a thing incapable of solution by the method of 
direct and unaided financial assistance. They 
started abroad with a conviction that the cessation 
of hostilities would begin a new chapter in the his- 
tory of the salvage of European Jewry by American 
Jewry. The effort at mere palliative relief, they 
thought, would come to an end, and a greater and 
more comprehensive endeavor would be initiated 
looking toward the restoration of the victimized 
millions to self-respect ind normal lives. That 
had been the primary object of the expedition — to 
discover ways and means of applying American 
funds to the permanent rehabilitation of Russian 
and Polish and Galician Jewry. The commission 
has come back in a skeptical frame of mind. Such 
members of it as I have spoken to invariably shake 
their heads doubtfully at the mere mention of con- 
structive relief. How, they ask, can one be think- 
ing of reconstructing a community whose very nerve 
and bone is in a state of advanced decomposition? 
A "convict population" is the startling phrase which 
constantly recurs in their accounts of conditions 
over there. Even emigration is, for a long time to 
come, out of the question. The war has made a 
sick people of the Jews of Eastern Europe, just as 
it has, I presume, made invalids of a great many 



150 THE JEW PAYS 

others. They are not fit to travel; they have de- 
veloped an entire catalog of novel physical and 
mental ailments. Their children are under- 
nourished and stunted; their women are sucked dry 
of vitality and retain barely enough vigor to sustain 
themselves, to say nothing of nursing their young; 
and the men are afflicted with shattered nerves, 
which render them timid of their environment and 
distrustful of the future. 

And so this little volume leaves off exactly where 
it began. The question that I asked in the earliest 
chapter remains unanswered, and becomes more 
perplexing the longer I think of it. Here are six 
millions of starving, homeless, utterly broken hu- 
man beings. What is to be done about them? 
The Jew of Eastern Europe is paying the price of 
"peace" just as he has been paying the price of a 
war not of his own making. Surely the simplest 
and most immediate method of saving him from ex- 
piring before our very eyes is for American Jewry 
to go on with the burdensome work they have been 
doing for the past five years. Whatever other 
remedies may be thought of and applied, the first 
need will be for vaster and ever vaster sums. 
However vividly we may realize the inadequacy of 
mere physical relief, it is the one form of help ihit 
can be immediately extended. And the splendid 
record of American Jewry, since the beginning of 



PROBLEMS 151 

the war, is a reassuring guarantee that nothing will 
be left undone in this direction. But, clearly, this 
heroic effort is bounded by a multitude of limita- 
tions. It is an attempt to treat the patient by re- 
lieving symptoms instead of by making a direct 
attack on the malady itself. The present status of 
the Jew in Eastern Europe is not a product of the 
war, nor an inheritance of the day before yester- 
day. Neither will it be changed with the ultimate, 
and after all inevitable, reign of peace in Europe. 
The thing has been with us altogether too long; and 
unless something drastic and heroic is done, we 
shall never see the end of it. The Eastern Jew is 
threatening to become the world's public charge, 
unless the organized decent opinion of the world de- 
termines once for all to get at the causes of his help- 
lessness and to remove them. There is here a duty 
and an opportunity for civilized society in general 
and for America in particular to step in and demand 
that the Jew shall everywhere be allowed to live his 
life in freedom and usefulness. America can with 
particular grace and self-confidence make such a 
demand by pointing at once to her own proud record 
in her dealings with the Jew and to the magnificent 
results of her policy. The rebuilding of the an- 
cient Jewish homeland may perhaps eventually 
solve the Jewish question; but for the time being 
the life of an entire people and the sheer social 



152 THE JEW PAYS 

health of a dozen European countries hang upon 
an application of the Golden Rule and the political 
experience of the last century to the sorely stricken 
Jews of the Old World. 



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